BERrElEY 

LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF     . 
CAUFORNIA/ 


IS  AMERICA 
SAFE  FOR  DEMOCRACY? 


IS  AMERICA 
SAFE  FOR  DEMOCRACY? 


SIX  LECTURES   GIVEN   AT  THE 

LOWELL  INSTITUTE  OF  BOSTON,  UNDER  THE  TITLE 

"anthropology  AND  HISTORY,    OR 

THE   INFLUENCE   OF   ANTHROPOLOGIC  CONSTITUTION 

ON   THE  DESTINIES   OF   NATIONS  " 


BY 

WILLIAM   McDOUGALL 

PROFESSOR    OF    PSYCHOLOGY    IN    HARVARD    COLLEGE 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S   SONS 

1921 


Copyright,  1921,  by 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


Published  June,  1921 


THE  8CRIBNER   PRESS 


FOREWORD 

As  I  watch  the  American  nation  speeding  gaily, 
with  invincible  optimism,  down  the  road  to  de- 
struction, I  seem  to  be  contemplating  the  greatest 
tragedy  in  the  history  of  mankind.  Other  nations 
have  declined  and  passed  away;  and  their  places 
have  been  filled,  the  torch  of  civilization  has  been 
caught  up  and  carried  forward  by  new  nations 
emerging  from  the  shadow-lands  of  barbarism. 
But,  if  the  American  nation  should  go  down, 
whence  may  we  expect  a  new  birth  of  progress? 
Where  shall  we  look  for  a  virile  stock  fit  to  take 
up  the  tasks  of  world-leadership  ?  It  may  be  that 
the  yellow  millions  of  the  Far  East  contain  the 
potency  of  an  indefinite  progress  and  stability. 
That  is  a  vague  and  uncertain  possibiUty.  What- 
ever that  potency  may  be,  it  behooves  us,  the 
bearers  of  Western  civilization,  to  take  most 
anxious  thought  that  we  may  prevent,  if  possible, 
the  decline  and  decay  which  have  been  the  fate  of 
all  the  civilized  nations  of  Europe  and  of  the  Near 
and  Middle  East. 

Many   excellent  books  have  been  published,. 


vi  FOREWORD 

urging  the  claims  of  "eugenics,"  since  Francis 
Galton  first  stirred  the  conscience  of  Europe  and 
America  on  this  problem  of  the  preservation  of 
human  quahties.  Most  of  these  books  have  been 
written  from  the  purely  biological  standpoint. 
They  give  excellent  accounts  of  the  principles  of 
natural  selection,  of  heredity,  and  of  the  Men- 
dehan  laws.  It  has  seemed  to  me  that  a  presen- 
tation of  the  case  for  eugenics  from  a  more  psy- 
chological standpoint  and  on  a  broad  historical 
background  might  usefully  supplement  these  bio- 
logical treatises.  For,  important  as  are  the  facts 
and  principles  of  physical  heredity,  the  general 
reader  may  have  some  difficulty  in  connecting  the 
processes  of  cell-division,  the  chromosomes  of  the 
fruit-fly,  or  the  coat-colors  of  piebald  guinea-pigs 
with  the  spiritual  endowment  of  mankind.  I  have 
therefore  brought  together  in  these  few  lectures 
the  findings  of  mental  anthropology,  which  are 
now  beginning  to  be  garnered  on  a  large  scale; 
and  I  have  tried  to  indicate,  in  as  impartial  and 
scientific  a  manner  as  is  possible  in  this  still  ob- 
scure field,  their  bearing  upon  the  great  problems 
of  national  welfare  and  national  decay.  The  body 
of  the  book  is  the  substance  of  six  lectures  given 
at  the  Lowell  Institute  of  Boston  in  the  spring  of 
this  year.    I  have  added  in  foot-notes  some  evi- 


FOREWORD  vii 

dential  matter  which  may  be  neglected  by  the 
cursory  reader.  And  in  appendices  I  have  put 
forward  certain  proposals  which,  if  they  could  be 
put  into  practice,  would,  I  thinly,  go  far  to  remedy 
the  present  disastrous  state  of  affairs. 

I  would  especially  draw  the  attention  of  readers 
interested  in  political,  economic,  or  social  science 
to  the  evidence  cited  in  this  volume  which  indicates 
very  strongly,  if  it  does  not  finally  prove,  that  the 
social  stratification  which  exists  in  modern  indus- 
trial communities  is  positively  correlated  with  a 
corresponding  stratification  of  innate  moral  and 
intellectual  quality,  or,  in  less  technical  language, 
that  the  upper  social  strata,  as  compared  with 
the  lower,  contain  a  larger  proportion  of  persons 
of  superior  natural  endowments.  This  is  a  propo- 
sition which  has  been  stoutly  maintained  by  most 
of  the  eugenists  from  Galton  onward.  But  it  has 
been  the  greatest  weakness  of  the  eugenic  propa- 
ganda that  it  is  so  largely  founded  upon  and  as- 
sumes the  truth  of  this  proposition.  For  the  critics 
and  scorners  of  eugenics  have  vehemently  denied 
it,  or  poured  ridicule  upon  it;  and  no  proof  of  it 
was  available  for  their  refutation.  In  a  paper  read 
before  the  Eugenics  Education  Society  in  London 
("Psychology  in  the  Service  of  Eugenics,"  Eu- 
genics Review y  January,  1914)  I  pointed  out  that 


viii  FOREWORD 

this  great  gap  in  the  eugenist  argument  could  onh' 

be  filled  by  applying  the  methods  of  experimental 

psychology.    Two  of  my  pupils  (Mr.  C.  Burt  and 

Mr.  H.  B.  English)  made  the  first  contribution 

by  such  methods  toward  the  filling  of  the  gap; 

and  more  recently  several  similar  studies  with 

similar  positive  results  have  been  made  in  this 

country.    They   are   reported   in   the   following 

pages. 

W.  McD. 

Harvard  College, 
April,  1921. 


IS  AMERICA 
SAFE  FOR  DEMOCRACY? 


IS  AMERICA   SAFE   FOR 
DEMOCRACY? 


In  this  short  course  of  lectures  I  propose  to 
direct  your  attention  to  a  most  difficult  and  ob- 
scure question.  I  have  chosen  this  difficult  topic, 
not  because  I  have  any  new  or  startling  conclu- 
sions to  announce,  but  because  the  facts  and  re- 
flections I  am  to  put  before  you  have  urgent  bear- 
ing upon  many  problems  of  private  conduct  and 
public  policy.  The  importance  of  our  topic  is 
very  great  for  all  peoples;  but  for  the  American 
people  at  the  present  time  it  seems  to  me  to  over- 
shadow and  dwarf  every  other  that  any  man 
of  science  could  propose  for  your  consideration. 
Why  has  it  this  supreme  importance  at  this  time 
and  place?  Because  you,  the  American  people, 
are  laying  the  foundations  of  the  American  nation, 
a  nation  which  already  outstrips  every  other  in 
its  influence  upon,  or  its  capacity  of  influencing, 
the  future  history  of  mankind.  You  may  still 
have  rivals  in  the  fields  of  art  and  science  and  lit- 


2  AMERICA'S  RESPONSIBILITY 

erature.  There  are  peoples  more  numerous  than 
you;  and  there  are  states  which  control  greater 
areas  of  the  earth's  surface  and  larger  masses  of 
population.  But  in  two  respects  you  stand  un- 
rivalled. First,  in  respect  of  the  number  of  persons 
among  you  who  are  brought  under  the  higher 
influences  of  that  civiHzation  which  now  controls 
the  world,  and  which,  if  human  foresight  is  not 
wholly  untrustworthy,  promises  to  be  the  founda- 
tion of  all  future  civihzation,  no  matter  how  great 
the  changes  it  may  undergo.  Secondly,  the  Amer- 
ican people  is  unrivalled  in  respect  of  the  material 
resources  which  it  effectively  controls  as  the  es- 
sential basis  of  its  power  and  culture  in  the  pres- 
ent and  of  its  progress  in  the  future. 

The  great  increase  of  knowledge  which  we  owe 
to  the  scientific  labors  of  the  nineteenth  century 
has  put  us,  the  bearers  of  the  civilization  of  the 
twentieth  century,  in  a  position  that  has  no  prece- 
dent, a  position  profoundly  different  from  that  of 
any  of  the  great  civiUzations  of  the  past.  The 
Romans,  the  Greeks,  the  Persians,  the  Egyptians, 
the  Babylonians,  were  surrounded  by  unknown 
possibilities;  their  vision  was  confined  to  a  small 
area  of  the  earth  and  to  their  own  immediate  past. 
To  foresee  their  future  or  to  control  it  was  for 
them  wholly  impossible.    How  different  is  our 


NO  GREAT  UNKNOWN  FACTORS        3 

position !  We  have  mapped  the  whole  earth;  we 
know  its  status  and  relations  among  the  other 
heavenly  bodies;  we  can  describe,  in  a  general  way, 
its  past  history  during  many  millions  of  years;  we 
understand  in  some  degree  all  the  physical  ener- 
gies, and  can  in  a  large  measure  control  them  and 
bend  them  to  the  service  of  mankind.  All  the 
races  of  men  are  known  to  us.  There  remains  no 
great  reservoir  of  humankind  which  may  issue 
from  some  uncharted  region  to  overwhelm  and 
destroy  our  civilization.  And,  most  important  of 
all,  we  are  beginning  to  understand  something  of 
the  nature  of  man,  something  of  the  history  of 
the  development  of  the  species,  something  of  our 
bodily  frame  and  mental  powers,  and  of  the  long 
process  by  which  our  intellectual  and  moral  cul- 
ture has  been  achieved. 

The  Great  War  has  given  us  one  new  item  of 
knowledge  which  completes  our  assurance  that 
we,  the  heirs  of  Western  civilization,  hold  its  des- 
tiny in  our  hands  to  make  or  mar.  Before  the 
war  it  was  an  open  question  whether  civilized 
man,  bred  largely  in  towns  to  sedentary  modes  of 
life,  could  sustain  the  hardships  and  strains  of 
prolonged  warfare;  whether  in  a  clash  of  arms 
against  some  more  primitive  people  we  might  not 
be  overborne  and  swept  away  for  sheer  lack  of 


/ 


4  COURAGE  OF  CIVILIZED  MAN 

nerve,  of  animal  courage;  whether  our  town-bred 
bespectacled  young  men,  their  imaginations  quick- 
ened by  education,  and  all  unused  to  physical 
hardship,  pain,  and  bloodshed,  might  not  shrink 
and  crumble  when  brought  face  to  face  with  the 
horrors  of  war.  But  in  the  terrible  years  we  have 
lived  through  we  have  seen  regiments  of  cockneys 
from  the  London  suburbs,  and  of  Lancashire  lads 
drawn  from  the  mills  and  factories  of  the  world's 
greatest  industrial  hive,  distinguish  themselves 
by  gallantry  and  by  patient  courage  in  the  field. 
These  men  have  remained  resolute  and  cheerful 
under  a  strain  of  warfare  which,  in  respect  of  its 
horrors,  its  intense  physical  and  emotional  shocks, 
and  the  long  continuance  of  the  strain,  has  far 
surpassed  every  previous  and  more  primitive 
warfare.  We  know  now  that  civilization  and 
culture,  even  in  their  worst  forms,  do  not  neces- 
sarily sap  the  moral  energies  of  men;  rather,  we 
know  that  trained  intelligence  and  disciplined 
will  can  withstand  the  extreme  horrors  of  war 
far  better  than  the  cruder  more  animal  courage 
of  the  primitive  hunter  and  warrior. 

Our  civilization  stands,  then,  in  this  position  of 
immense  advantage  as  compared  with  all  civiliza- 
tions of  the  past.  And  on  the  American  people 
lies  the  responsibility  for  its  future  in  a  greater 


CYCLES  OF   CIVILIZATION  5 

degree  than  on  any  other;  because  it  has  at  its 
command,  in  a  higher  degree  than  any  other,  all 
the  resources,  material  and  spiritual,  from  which 
our  civilization  proceeds. 

I  will  state  concisely  the  thesis  which  I  shall 
develop  and  attempt  to  prove  to  you  in  this  course 
of  lectures.    Looking  back  over  the  history  of 
mankind,  we  see  that  it  consists  in  the  successive 
rise  and  decay  of  great  civilizations  borne  by  dif- 
ferent peoples  in  various  parts  of  the  earth.    I 
need  not  enumerate  these;  their  names  are  familiar 
to  you.     The  facts  have  been  insisted  upon  by 
many  writers;  they  have  been  displayed  by  none 
more  clearly  than  by  Professor  Flinders  Petrie 
in  his  "Revolutions  of  Civilization."     They  are 
summed  up  in  the  famihar  phrase,  "cycles  of  civ- 
ilization.''   They  are  briefly  as  follows.    We  see 
again  and  again  a  people  in  some  favored  area  of 
the  earth's  surface  slowly  build  up  a  great  and 
complex  civiUzation,  incorporating  essential  ele- 
ments of  culture  which  it  has  acquired  from  some 
older  civilization,  adding  to  them  and  moulding 
them  into  hannony  with  its  own  genius  and  spe- 
cial needs.    For  many  centuries  the  slow  process 
of  upbuilding,  growth,  and  enrichment  goes  on. 
Then  comes  an  arrest  and,  usually  after  a  com- 
paratively short  period,  the  whole  complex  organ- 


u  ^^ 


x*- 


6  THE  PARABOLA  OF  PEOPLES 

ism  decays  and  plunges  more  or  less  rapidly  down- 
ward from  the  height  it  had  attained.  In  some 
cases  the  decay  has  gone  so  far  that  nothing  re- 
mains of  the  people  and  its  culture,  beyond  a  few 
mounds  of  earth  and  broken  brick.  In  others  the 
people  has  continued  to  exist,  but  stagnant  and 
inert,  contributing  nothing  further  to  the  prog- 
ress of  mankind,  retaining  little  or  nothing  of 
what  was  most  admirable  in  its  period  of  ascent 
and  greatness. 

It  is  as  though  each  such  people,  having  been 
projected  upon  its  upward  path  by  some  great 
force,  maintains  its  ascending  movement  until  its 
momentum  is  spent,  then  falls  back  to  earth,  a 
mere  mass  of  human  clay,  undistinguished  above 
others  by  any  power  to  create,  to  progress,  or  in 
any  way  rise  above  the  common  level  of  mankind. 
If  we  seek  a  phrase  which  will  convey  most  con- 
cisely the  nature  of  this  recurring  process,  the 
process  which  has  been  denoted  by  the  phrase 
"revolutions  or  cycles  of  civihzation,"  we  may,  I 
suggest,  best  describe  it  as  "the  parabola  of  peo- 
ples.'* For  the  course  of  the  rise  and  fall  of  a 
people  tends  to  resemble  the  trajectory  of  a  stone 
thrown  obliquely  upward  from  the  hand,  a  long 
ascending  curve,  an  almost  flat  summit,  and  a 
steep  decline. 


THE  ECONOMIC  INTERPRETATION       7 

Many  speculations  have  been  provoked  by  the 
contemplation  of  this  recurring  phenomenon. 
The  first  response  of  the  mind  is  to  ask — ^Is  this 
inevitable,  is  this  parabola  the  expression  of  some 
inescapable  law  of  nature?  Are  we  also  destined 
to  follow  the  same  curve  and,  sooner  or  later,  to 
plunge  downward  to  stagnation  or  decay?  Or 
may  we,  by  taking  thought,  hope  to  escape  the 
common  fate  of  all  our  predecessors?  Can  we 
estabHsh  our  course  so  securely  that  our  descen- 
dants may  continue  to  progress,  for  an  indefinitely 
long  period,  in  art  and  science  and  social  organiza- 
tion, attaining  heights  of  power,  security,  and 
happiness  unimaginable  by  us? 

In  order  to  answer  these  questions,  we  must 
have  some  understanding  of  the  causes  of  the  rise 
and  fall  of  the  curve  of  civilization.  The  answers 
that  have  been  suggested  fall  into  two  main 
classes:  first,  the  answer  impHed  by  the  economic 
interpretation  of  history;  secondly,  the  anthro- 
pological answxr.  The  former  would  see  the 
essential  factors  in  changes  of  climate,  discoveries 
of  new  sources  of  wealth  or  of  energy,  or  the  open- 
ing up  of  new  regions  of  the  earth  and  the  con- 
sequent shiftings  of  trade  routes.  The  anthro- 
pological theory  regards  all  such  economic  factors 
as  of  but  subsidiary  importance.    It  points  out 


8  ANTHROPOLOGIC  INTERPRETATION 

that  peoples  which  were  destined  to  climb  the 
curve  have  subdued  and  transformed  the  physical 
world  to  their  needs  or,  if  necessary,  have  sought 
out  and  conquered  for  themselves  a  more  propi- 
tious habitat.  It  points  to  regions  such  as  Meso- 
potamia and  the  Nile  valley,  where  men  have 
made  the  desert  bloom  with  all  that  was  needed 
as  the  physical  basis  of  great  civilizations.  And 
it  points  to  other  great  regions,  such  as  Africa 
south  of  the  Sahara,  and  South  and  North  Amer- 
ica, regions  which  are  richest  in  all  that  man 
needs  and  which  nevertheless  produced  hardly 
more  than  savagery  or  barbarism,  while  Europe 
and  Asia  saw  the  rise  and  fall  of  many  civiliza- 
tions. It  asserts  also  that  in  such  regions  as 
Mesopotamia  and  Egypt  there  have  been  no  great 
changes  (save  such  as  man  himself  has  pro- 
duced) which  could  account  for  the  rise  or  fall  of 
their  peoples.  It  points  to  the  fact  that  the 
Roman  Empire,  which  for  four  hundred  years 
controlled  the  resources  of  the  fairest  regions  of 
Europe,  Northern  Africa,  and  Asia,  levying  trib- 
ute upon  all  the  known  world,  went  down  be- 
neath the  assault  of  the  barbarians  from  the 
North,  without  any  great  change  of  economic 
conditions  that  can  be  assigned  as  a  cause.  Such 
instances  show  that  the  economic  factors  are  of 


THE  ALLEGED   OLD  AGE  OF  NATIONS    9 

secondary  importance;  they  show  that  the  most 
favorable  area  can  become  the  seat  of  a  great 
civilization  only  when  it  is  occupied  by  a  people 
more  capable  than  most  of  profiting  by  its  geo- 
graphic advantages;  and  that  these  advantages 
will  not  avail  to  save  a  people  from  decay,  if  and 
when  it  loses  its  natural  superiority. 

One  anthropologic  theory  has  been  widely  ac- 
cepted as  accounting  for  the  decay  of  peoples. 
Leaving  the  problem  of  their  ascent  untouched,  it 
asserts  that  peoples  grow  old,  just  as  men  and 
animals  do,  and  that  they  must  as  inevitably  de- 
cline in  vigor  after  a  certain  age.  It  cannot  be 
too  strongly  insisted  that  this  fatahstic  theory  is 
utterly  unfounded,  if  it  is  offered  as  anything 
more  than  a  descriptive  formula. 

Professor  Flinders  Petrie,  who  has  brought  out 
so  clearly  the  facts  we  are  considering,  and  who 
points  out  that  the  period  of  the  cycle  or  parabola 
has  approximated  in  many  instances  to  one  thou- 
sand eight  hundred  years,  advances  a  theory 
which  claims  to  explain  both  the  rise  and  the  faU 
of  the  curve.  He  supposes  that  every  cycle  is 
initiated  by  a  biological  blending  of  two  races; 
that  this  gives  to  the  blended  stock  a  new  energy 
which  carries  it  up  the  scale  of  civilization;  that, 
after  about  one  thousand  eight  hundred  years, 


lo  PETRIE'S  THEORY 

this  effect  is  exhausted  and  that,  in  consequence 
of  loss  of  vigor,  decHne  inevitably  sets  in. 

There  may  be  some  truth  in  this  view  as  re- 
gards the  initiation  of  the  rise  of  a  civilization. 
There  is  some  evidence  that  the  crossing  of  closely 
related  stocks  does  conduce  to  increase  of  vigor 
and  probably  also  to  variability;  and  that  these 
effects  must  be  favorable  to  national  progress 
seems  obvious.  Vigor,  energy  of  mind  and  body, 
is  certainly  an  all-important  factor,  without  which 
all  other  natural  endowments  and  advantages  will 
effect  little.  And  variability  of  the  stock  would 
seem  to  be  a  necessary  condition  of  the  produc- 
tion of  the  persons  of  exceptional  endowments 
without  whom  a  nation  can  neither  rise  in  the 
scale  of  civilization  nor  maintain  a  great  posi- 
tion. 

But  as  regards  the  decline  of  peoples,  Petrie's 
theory  seems  to  contain  less  of  truth.  The  old 
view  that  inbreeding  necessarily  results  in  de- 
generation has  been  much  blown  upon  of  late. 
Facts  are  accumulating  which  seem  to  show  that 
very  close  inbreeding  is  compatible  with  contin- 
ued and  even  increased  vigor  of  the  stock. 

Now,  it  is  this  second  part  of  the  problem  in 
which  we  are  practically  interested.  We  belong 
to  a  stock  which  has  produced  a  great  civiKzation, 


KNO\VLEDGE  OUTRUNS  WISDOM       ii 

one  which  seems  to  be  still  on  the  ascending  part 
of  its  curve.  Our  concern,  our  responsibility,  is 
to  maintain  if  possible  that  ascending  curve,  or 
at  least  to  postpone  as  long  as  possible  the  onset 
of  the  period  of  decline,  if  that,  in  truth,  must 
inevitably  come.  And  there  are  not  lacking  indi- 
cations that  our  Western  civilization  may  already 
have  reached  its  climax,  may  even  now  be  sliding 
down  the  curve  of  dechne.  For  we  must  not 
allow  ourselves  to  be  dazzled  by  the  material 
achievements  of  the  recent  past.  In  trying  to 
estimate  our  position,  we  must  have  regard  to 
moral  and  intellectual  achievements  of  kinds  less 
easily  appreciated  than  the  aeroplane  and  the  big 
gun,  the  submarine  and  the  poison-gas. 

It  is  true  that  we  have  obtained  a  wonderful 
coromand  over  the  physical  energies  of  the  world; 
but  if  we  have  not,  individually  and  collectively 
as  nations,  the  wisdom,  the  patience,  the  self- 
control,  to  direct  these  immense  energies  conform- 
ably to  high  moral  ideals,  our  tampering  with 
them  will  but  hasten  our  end,  will  but  plunge  us 
the  more  rapidly  down  the  slope  of  destruction. 
There  is  but  too  good  ground  for  the  fear  that 
our  knowledge  has  outrun  our  wisdom,  that, 
though  we  have  learned  to  exploit  the  physical 
energies  of  the  world,  we  have  not  the  wisdom 


12  THE  THESIS   STATED 

and  morality  effectively  to  direct  them  for  the 
good  of  mankind. 

Leaving,  then,  the  obscure  problem  of  the  ori- 
gins of  civilizations  and  of  the  causes  of  the  ascent 
of  peoples,  I  wish  to  concentrate  your  attention 
upon  the  more  urgent  and  practically  important 
problem  of  the  causes  or  conditions  that  bring 
about  their  decline.  In  respect  of  this  great 
problem,  my  thesis  is  that  the  anthropological 
theory  is  the  true  one,  that  the  great  condition  of 
the  decline  of  any  civilization  is  the  inadequacy  of 
the  qualities  of  the  people  who  are  the  hearers  of  it. 

This  inadequacy  may  be  one  of  two  kinds;  or 
it  may  be,  perhaps  generally  has  been,  of  both 
kinds.  Inadequacy  of  the  one  kind  may  result 
from  the  increase  of  complexity  of  the  environ- 
ment which  accompanies  the  rise  of  civilization, 
which  is,  in  fact,  an  inevitable  and  necessary 
feature  of  it.  Without  change  of  the  essential 
quahties  of  a  people,  those  qualities  may  become 
relatively  inadequate  to  the  support  of  its  civiHza- 
tion;  just  because  advancing  civiHzation  makes, 
with  every  step  of  progress,  greater  demands 
upon  its  bearers.  Let  me  illustrate  by  reference 
to  three  great  features  which,  in  various  degrees, 
appear  in  all  civilizations.  First,  increasing  con- 
trol of  natural  resources  gives  men  leisure  and 


COMPLEXITY  OF  ENVIRONMENT      13 

opportunity  to  seek  relaxation  and  amusement. 
Now  leisure  and  amusement  are  most  dangerous 
things,  as  some  of  us  know.    Few  men  are  capa- 
ble of  using  leisure  and  of  choosing  their  amuse- 
ments entirely  wisely,  and  some  men  are  quite 
incapable    of    doing    so.    Well,    civilization    in- 
evitably lays  upon  great  masses  of  men  this  re- 
sponsibihty.    How  do  they  respond  to  it?    We 
know  how  in  the  great  age  of  Rome  the  circus, 
the  combat  of  gladiators  and  of  wild  beasts,  and 
the  chariot  races,  became  the  passionate  delight 
of  the  multitude.    We  know  how  many  forms  of 
luxury,  wines,  perfumes,  foods,  baths,  slaves,  with 
resulting  habits  of  indulgence,  were  introduced 
from  all  parts  of  the  world.    Under  such  com-   ^ 
plexities  of  environment  many  men  who,  under 
simpler  conditions,  would  have  Hved  solid,  useful, 
and  happy  lives,  became  enervated,  their  inter- 
ests and  leisure  increasmgly  absorbed  in  these 
useless  if  not  actually  harmful  amusements. 

Secondly,  the  increase  of  complexity  of  per- 
sonal relations  tends  also  to  demand  ever  higher 
quaUties  from  the  persons  concerned.  Consider 
the  relations  of  employer  and  workman.  In  the 
days  of  slavery,  whether  in  Greece  or  Rome  or 
Virginia,  how  simple  were  the  quaHties  required 
for  the  satisfactory  working  of  the  institution. 


14  MORAL  COMPLEXITIES 

the  relation !  The  owner  of  an  estate  worked  by 
slaves  had  only  to  be  an  intelligent  and  kind- 
hearted  man  in  order  to  be  surrounded  by  happy 
faithful  workers,  a  benevolent  autocrat  in  the 
midst  of  grateful  and  devoted  followers.  And 
in  the  intermediate  stage  of  small  farming  and 
small  industry,  where  the  employer  is  in  close 
personal  contact  with  all  his  men,  a  small  dose  of 
kindliness  and  good  sense  goes  a  long  way  to  the 
maintenance  of  satisfactory  relations.  But  to- 
day, in  our  industrial  world,  what  great  demands 
are  made  on  the  qualities  of  the  employer !  How 
patient,  how  understanding,  how  far-sighted,  how 
humane  he  must  be,  if  he  is  to  avoid  bitter  strife 
with  his  work-people  1 

Thirdly,  and  perhaps  most  important,  the  in- 
creased intercourse  between  peoples,  which  is  a 
leading  feature  and  condition  of  progressing  civ- 
iKzation,  inevitably  weakens,  when  it  does  not 
altogether  destroy,  the  influence  of  the  customs 
and  moral  traditions  by  which  our  lives  are 
guided.  Instead  of  being  moulded  insensibly  to 
conform  to  the  customs  and  traditions  which  have 
sufficed  to  bring  our  forefathers  safely  through 
the  perils  of  Hfe,  to  guide  them  in  the  simpler 
environment  of  the  past,  we  are  confronted  by 
ever  more  numerous  possibilities  of  choice  be- 


PROGRESS  BRINGS  DEMANDS  15 

tween  rival  customs  and  traditions  and  new  be- 
liefs and  theories.  We  are  called  upon  to  choose 
wisely,  to  steer  our  course  warily,  among  untried 
but  perhaps  attractive  novelties,  new  rehgions, 
new  social  theories,  new  ethical  precepts.  And 
the  result  of  all  this  is  inevitable;  it  is  the  price 
that  must  be  paid  for  progress;  not  only  do  the 
customs  and  traditions  to  which  each  man  ad- 
heres exert  a  less  powerful  sway  over  his  conduct, 
but  also  the  harmony  of  the  society  in  which  and 
by  which  he  lives  is  weakened  and  disordered. 

In  these  ways,  and  in  many  others,  every  ad- 
vance of  civihzation  makes  greater  demands  upon 
the  quahties  of  its  bearers;  and  it  is,  I  thmk,  ob- 
vious that  in  these  respects  our  present  civihza- 
tion has  surpassed  all  its  predecessors,  surpassed 
them  m  the  opportunities  for  leisure  and  amuse- 
ment, m  the  complexity  of  personal  relations,  in 
the  variety  of  customs,  traditions,  behefs,  theories 
of  conduct,  with  which  we  are  brought  m  con- 
tact, all  demanding  on  our  part  the  exercise  of  a 
wisdom,  a  self-control,  and  a  degree  of  devotion 
to  a  moral  ideal,  such  as  no  previous  civilization 
has  required. 

We  are  making  great  efforts  to  meet  these  de- 
mands, we  are  multiplying  and  improving  our 
educational  institutions;  and,  in  this  country  es- 


i6     CAN  EDUCATION  MEET  THE  NEEDS? 

pecially,  the  rising  generation  seems  to  be  respond- 
ing, by  making  full  use  of  the  advantages  provided 
for  it.  But  there  remains  to  be  answered  the  all- 
important  question — Is  it  possible,  by  improved 
and  extended  education,  adequately  to  prepare 
the  rising  generations  for  the  immense  responsi- 
bilities they  must  bear?  Are  their  innate  qualities 
such  as  will  enable  them  to  rise  to  the  level  re- 
quired by  the  increasing  complexity  and  difficulty 
of  the  tasks  that  will  be  laid  upon  them?  Will 
the  human  quahties  which  have  carried  our  civi- 
lization upward  to  its  present  point  of  complexity 
— ^will  they  suffice  to  carry  it  further,  or  even  to 
maintain  it  at  its  present  level? 

That  is  a  grave  question.  But  a  still  graver 
question  calls  for  our  most  earnest  consideration, 
namely:  Does  not  progressive  civiHzation,  while  it 
makes  ever  greater  demands  on  the  quahties  of 
its  bearers,  does  it  not  tend  to  impair,  has  it  not 
always  in  the  past  actually  impaired,  the  quahties 
of  the  peoples  on  whom  it  makes  these  increasing 
demands? 

History  and  Anthropology  seem  to  point  to  the 
same  answer  to  this  grave  question — namely,  to 
the  positive  answer.  History  seems  to  exhibit 
unmistakably  this  tendency  of  civihzation  to  im- 
pair the  qualities  of  its  bearers;  and  Anthropolog}^ 


THE  ANTHROPOLOGIC  THEORY        17 

shows  us  how  and  why  it  has  so  worked  in  the 
past  and  still  is  tending,  perhaps  more  strongly 
than  ever  before,  in  this  direction. 

Here,  then,  is  the  anthropological  theory  of  the 
decline  of  peoples: 

Every  human  being,  and  therefore  every  com- 
munity of  human  beings,  every  populace,  inherits 
from  its  ancestry  a  stock  of  innate  qualities  which 
enable  it  to  enjoy,  to  sustain,  to  promote,  a  civ- 
ihzation  of  a  certain  degree  of  complexity.  As 
civilization  advances,  it  makes  greater  and  greater 
demands  on  these  qualities,  requires  their  exer- 
cise and  development  in  ever  fuller  degree;  until 
it  approaches  a  point  at  which  its  complexity  out- 
runs the  possibilities  of  the  innate  qualities.  At 
the  same  time  it  tends  positively  to  impair  those 
qualities;  so  that,  as  the  demands  increase,  the 
latent  reserves  of  human  quality  are  diminished. 
Therefore  a  time  comes  when  the  supply  no 
longer  equals  the  demand;  that  moment  is  the 
cuhninating  point  of  that  civiUzation  and  of  that 
people,  the  turning-point  of  the  curve  from  which 
the  downward  plunge  begins.  This  downward 
tendency  may  be  gradual  and  difficult  to  discern 
at  first;  but  History  seems  to  show  that  it  is  apt 
to  be  an  accelerating  process. 

Anthropology  is  the  latest  and  most  backward 


i8  MENTAL  ANTHROPOLOGY 

of  the  sciences.  The  proper  study  of  mankind  is 
man.  But  how  difficult  is  that  study !  It  is  not 
very  difficult  to  study  the  things  that  man  has 
made,  his  languages,  his  arts,  his  manufactures, 
his  social  organizations,  his  achievements  of  all 
kinds.  But  how  difficult  to  infer  from  these  the 
nature  of  man's  constitution !  How  difficult  to 
correlate  any  pecuHarities  in  these  products  of 
his  activities  with  any  peculiarities  of  natural 
endowment !  The  physical  anthropologists  have, 
during  the  last  half-century,  accumulated  a  vast 
mass  of  data  about  certain  of  his  bodily  qualities 
— the  proportions  of  his  skull  and  other  bones, 
the  color  of  his  eyes,  his  stature  and  his  com- 
plexion and  his  hair.  These  data  are  of  great 
value;  but  they  concern  merely  his  material  struc- 
ture. It  is  the  mental  constitution  of  man,  the 
varying  sum  of  his  mental  qualities,  that  is  alone 
of  direct  importance  and  with  which  we  are  con- 
cerned. The  bodily  pecuHarities  are  of  impor- 
tance chiefly  in  so  far  as  they  may  serve  as 
indicators  of  mental  qualities.  It  is  this  mental 
anthropology  which  is  so  difficult  a  study  that  it 
has  only  quite  recently  begun  to  take  shape  as 
a  science,  the  science  we  call  modern  psychology. 
And  that  science  is,  accordingly,  in  a  very  rudi- 
mentary condition,  hopeful  and  active,  but  still 


THE  RACIAL  PROBLEM  19 

the  scene  of  the  most  widely  divergent  views  in 
respect  of  its  fundamental  questions.  Especially 
as  regards  the  innate  basis  of  the  human  mind, 
we  still  have  Httle  light  and  much  difference  of 
opinion.  Yet  only  knowledge  of  the  innate  basis 
of  the  mind  will  enable  us  to  arrive  at  well- 
founded  views,  in  face  of  the  great  problems  of 
the  rise  and  fall  of  nations. 

No  wonder,  then,  that,  when  these  problems 
began  to  be  actively  debated  early  in  the  last 
century,  there  were  acute  differences  of  opinion, 
much  error  and  much  false  dogma.    For  not  only 
was  all  such  discussion  carried  on  in  the  total  ab- 
sence of  the  necessary  basis  of  knowledge,  but  it 
was  a  discussion  in  which  the  participants  almost 
inevitably  were  moved  by  strong  desires  other  than 
the  desire  for  truth,  m  which  judgment  was  dis- 
torted by  strong  prejudices  and  sentiments.    The 
debate  inevitably  raised  the  question  of  the  rela- 
tive values  of  the  human  races,  the  superiority 
or  inferiority  of  this  race  to  that,  of  one  people  to 
another.    In  the  absence  of  all  certam  knowledge 
of  the  fundamental  facts,  what  hope  was  there 
that  racial  bias  should  be  discounted  and  kept  in 

check? 

The  story  opens  with  the  myth  of  the  Aryan 
race.    This  ''race"  was  a  phantasy  erected  by 


20  THE  ARYAN  MYTH 

racial  prejudice  on  a  basis  of  the  study  of  lan- 
guages. Community  of  language  was  accepted, 
in  the  face  of  all  probability,  as  evidence  of  com- 
munity of  race.  And  the  learned  world  was  con- 
vulsed with  controversies  over  the  origin  of  the 
Aryans,  a  race  which  had  never  existed.  From 
the  first,  racial  prejudice  was  at  work;  for  the 
Aryans  were  conceived  as  the  race  which  had 
produced  all  that  was  most  esteemed  in  the  cul- 
ture of  Europe  and  of  Asia;  and,  from  the  first, 
the  whole  question  was  confused  by  the  search 
for  the  lost  ten  tribes  of  Israel.  The  errors  of 
this  early  stage  of  the  discussion  provoked  some 
of  the  most  influential  writers  of  the  middle  of 
last  century  to  repudiate  the  notion  of  differences 
of  mental  constitution  between  the  races  of  men. 
J.  S.  Mill  declared:  ^'Of  all  vulgar  modes  of  escap- 
ing from  the  consideration  of  the  effect  of  social 
and  moral  influences  on  the  human  mind,  the 
most  vulgar  is  that  of  attributing  the  diversities 
of  conduct  and  character  to  inherent  natural 
differences."  And  he  was  followed  by  many 
others.  For  at  that  tune  the  prevailing  view  of 
the  human  mind,  of  which  Mill  was  the  chief 
exponent,  was  all  against  the  assumption  of  racial 
differences;  and  the  prevaiHng  humanitarian  sen- 
timent, of  which  also  Mill  was  a  leading  expo- 


POWER  OF  EDUCATION  21 

nent,  made  strongly  in  the  same  direction.  The 
psychology  of  that  time  was  the  "Association  psy- 
chology'* that  had  come  down  from  Locke  and 
Hume.  It  taught  that  at  birth  the  human  mind 
is  a  blank  sheet,  and  the  brain  a  structureless 
mass,  lacking  all  inherent  organization  or  tenden- 
cies to  develop  in  this  way  or  that;  a  mere  mass 
of  undefined  potentialities  which,  through  experi- 
ence, association,  and  habit,  through  education 
in  short,  could  be  moulded  and  developed  to  an 
unlimited  extent  and  in  any  manner  or  direction. 

There  prevailed,  therefore,  at  that  time  a  pro- 
found beHef  in  the  unlimited  power  of  education. 
J.  S.  Mill  himself  had  been  most  carefully  edu- 
cated from  his  earHest  years  by  his  father;  and  he 
attributed  his  own  achievements  in  the  intellec- 
tual sphere  wholly  to  that  fact,  overlooking  a  stiU 
more  important  fact,  namely,  that  he  was  the 
son  of  his  father,  a  man  of  great  intellectual  vigor 
and  capacity.  Even  those  who  perceived  the 
truth  that  by  education  you  cannot  make  every 
child  into  a  great  man  believed,  nevertheless,  that 
the  educative  process  had  only  to  be  applied  to 
some  few  successive  generations,  in  order  to  raise 
any  people  or  any  human  stock  to  an  indefinite 
degree  in  the  scale  of  intellectual  and  moral  value. 

Humanitarian  sentiment  worked  powerfully  in 


2  2  NOT  UNLIMITED 

favor  of  this  theory  of  the  unlimited  power  of 
education.  For  there  is  something  cold  and 
cruel,  something  repugnant  to  the  natural  kindH- 
ness  of  the  normal  man,  in  the  opposite  theory, 
the  theory  that  some  men,  and  even  whole  races 
of  men,  are  born  incapable  of  being  educated  be- 
yond a  very  modest  level  of  intellectual  and 
moral  achievement.  We  should  all  like  to  agree 
with  the  member  of  the  British  Parliament  who, 
indignantly  repudiating  an  aspersion  cast  upon 
some  section  of  his  countrymen,  declared  that 
^^one  man  is  as  good  as  another — and  a  great  deal 
better  too,  sometimes." 

So  striking  are  the  immediate  effects  of  educa- 
tion, and  so  strong  is  the  influence  of  humanitarian 
feeling  upon  opinion,  that  this  confidence  in  the 
unlimited  power  of  education  still  prevails  in  the 
popular  mind;  it  is,  I  think,  the  basis  of  much  of 
the  fine  optimism  with  which  the  American  peo- 
ple confronts  its  tasks,  the  imphcit  theory  on 
which  your  practice  is  based.^ 

Yet,  since  the  day  of  Mill,  science  has  done 
much  that  saps  this  theory;  it  has  achieved  new 

1  For  example,  I  am  told  by  a  prominent  educationist 
that  America  is  engaged  in  levelling  up  the  Philippines  to 
her  own  standards  by  instituting  universal  and  compul- 
sory schooling  among  them. 


'ALL  MEN  ARE  EQUAL  23 

knowledge  which,  if  it  were  generally  understood, 
would  go  far  to  undermine  the  complacency  with 
which  the  popular  mind  contemplates  the  future. 

This  new  insight  into  the  nature  of  man  forbids 
us  scornfully  to  set  aside,  as  the  vulgar  errors  of 
the  "race-theorizers,''  all  attempts  to  estimate  the 
intrinsic  values,  the  cultural  potentialities,  of  dif- 
ferent human  stocks.  It  calls  upon  us  to  weigh  the 
evidence  most  carefully  and  impartially,  putting 
aside,  as  strictly  as  in  us  lies,  both  racial  prejudice 
and  humanitarian  sentiment;  to  recognize  that, 
if  Nature  has  made  men  of  unequal  value,  the 
cruelty  is  hers,  not  ours,  and  that  we  do  no  wrong 
in  ascertaining  and  recording  the  facts. 

The  framers  of  The  Declaration  of  Indepen- 
dence embodied  in  it  the  celebrated  proposition 
that  "all  men  are  created  equal."  There  are 
two  senses  in  which  this  sentence  may  be  inter- 
preted. It  may  be  taken  to  mean  that  all  men 
are  equal  in  respect  of  their  claims  for  justice, 
for  humane  treatment  and  the  kindly  feeling  of 
their  fellows,  for  opportunities  to  make  the  best 
of  their  powers  of  service  and  of  happiness.  On 
the  other  hand,  it  may  be,  and  sometimes  has 
been,  taken  to  mean  that  all  men  are  born 
with  equal  capacities  for  intellectual  and  moral 
development.    There  can  be  no  doubt,  I  think, 


24  IN  WHAT  SENSE? 

that  the  former  interpretation  is  the  true  one. 
The  untruth  of  the  second  interpretation  is  so 
obvious,  and  in  all  ages  has  been  so  obvious,  that 
we  do  wrong  to  the  great  men  who  framed  the 
proposition,  if  we  assume  that  the  second  mean- 
ing was  intended  by  them.  In  the  former  sense 
the  proposition  conveys  a  great  moral  truth  and 
a  moral  ideal  which  all  men  can  accept  as  a  funda- 
mental principle  of  conduct. 


II 

About  the  time  at  which  J.  S.  Mill  denounced 
the  vulgar  errors  of  the  race-theorizers,  and  at 
which  T.  H.  Buckle,  the  historian  of  civilization 
in  Europe,  claimed  to  show  that  the  peoples  of 
the  various  regions  of  the  earth  are  moulded  by 
their  physical  environments  like  so  much  soft  clay, 
the  theory  of  the  all-importance  of  race  took  a 
new  turn  and  gave  rise  to  a  school  of  thought 
which  has  flourished  greatly,  which  still  flourishes, 
and  which  has  produced  great  and  disastrous  his- 
torical effects. 

In  1854  Count  Gobineau  pubHshed  his  treatise 
on  the  "Inequahty  of  the  Races  of  Man,"  and 
thereby  founded  the  German  school  of  race-dog- 
matists, sometimes  called  the  school  of  poHtico- 
anthropology.  He  announced  to  the  world:  "I 
have  become  convinced  that  everything  in  the 
way  of  human  creation,  science,  art,  civilization, 
all  that  is  great  and  noble  and  fruitful  on  the 
earth,  points  toward  a  single  source,  is  sprung 
from  one  and  the  same  root,  belongs  only  to  one 
family,  the  various  branches  of  which  have  domi- 
nated every  civihzed  region  of  the  world."    This 


26  THE   GERMAN  RACE-DOGMA 

family  he  asserted  to  be  the  Teutonic  race.  Gobi- 
neau's  race-theory  chimed  so  well  with  the  politi- 
cal aspirations  of  the  leaders  of  Germany  that, 
with  appropriate  modification  to  the  effect  that 
the  modern  Germans  are  the  purest  representa- 
tives of  the  super-race,  it  became  the  official  doc- 
trine of  that  country.  It  was  adopted  and  propa- 
gated assiduously  by  a  multitude  of  men,  both 
great  and  small.  Richard  Wagner  was  one  of  the 
ardent  disciples  of  this  school.  Nietzsche's  con- 
ception of  a  "great  blond  beast"  of  a  superman 
gave  the  dogma  a  literary  expression  which  pro- 
foundly influenced  many  young  Germans.  Ger- 
man anthropologists  busied  themselves  to  dis- 
cover evidence  in  its  support.  H.  S.  Chamber- 
lain, popularly  known  as  the  Kaiser's  favorite 
anthropologist,  gave  it  its  most  complete  expres- 
sion in  his  "Foundations  of  the  19th  Century," 
a  book  which  greatly  influenced  the  Germans, 
from  Wilhelm  II  downward.  In  these  ways,  by 
means  of  this  conspiracy  officially  promoted  for 
the  perversion  of  the  truth,  the  German  people, 
docile  as  always  to  their  elaborately  organized 
system  of  official  instruction,  was  persuaded  to 
beheve,  against  the  evidence  of  most  obvious 
facts,  that  it  was  the  chosen  people  of  the  world. 
And  the  acceptance  of  this  race-dogma  did  much 


RACE  HATRED  27 

to  convince  the  leaders  and  the  masses  of  the 
German  people  that  they  were  morally  justified 
in  setting  out  in  19 14  to  exterminate  their  weaker 
neighbors,  as  a  first  and  necessary  step  to  that 
world-rulership  to  which  they  beheved  themselves 
to  be  destined  by  Nature  or  by  God.  And  the 
professors,  if  we  may  judge  by  many  utterances, 
including  the  infamous  manifesto  signed  by  ninety- 
three  of  the  most  prominent  of  them,  were  just 
as  suggestible  and  deluded  as  the  masses.  This 
dogma  of  the  natural  and  predestined  supremacy 
of  the  German  people  gave  rise  incidentally,  but 
inevitably,  to  a  polemic  against  the  Jews,  and 
greatly  promoted  the  crusade  of  the  Anti-Semites. 
For  the  Jews  had  long  claimed  to  be  the  chosen 
people  of  the  Lord;  and  their  remarkable  per- 
sistence as  a  people,  in  spite  of  all  adverse  influ- 
ences, and,  it  may  be  added,  their  remarkable 
achievements,  lent  some  color  to  this  view.  Thus 
the  race-dogma  accentuated  racial  hatreds  and 
international  hostilities.  Odious  as  all  this  was, 
it  had  one  good  effect.  It  stimulated  some  men, 
more  especially  a  number  of  capable  Jews,  to  ex- 
amine in  a  critical  spirit  the  evidence  on  which 
the  race-dogma  claimed  to  be  founded. 

Notable    among    these    are    Friedrich    Hertz, 
author  of  "Modem  Race  Theories,"  and  Ignaz 


/ 


28      METHODS  OF  RACE-DOGMATISTS 

Zollshan,  whose  book,  "The  Race  Problem/'  pub- 
lished in  1909,  is  a  critical  examination  of  the 
German  race-dogma  and  a  temperate  and  success- 
ful defense  of  the  racial  value  of  the  Jews.  These 
writers  had  no  difficulty  in  exposing  to  impartial 
readers  the  exaggerations  and  distortions  of  the 
German  race-dogmatists.  The  logic  of  the  latter 
was  deplorable,  and  their  disregard  of  facts  was 
obvious  to  the  most  casual  reader.  It  was  their 
habit  to  discover  some  traces  of  physical  quali- 
ties, such  as  tall  stature,  blue  eyes,  long  heads,  or 
fair  hair,  among  whatever  people  had  achieved 
any  noteworthy  work,  and,  taking  this  as  evi- 
dence of  some  infusion  of  Germanic  blood,  to 
attribute  the  achievement  of  that  people  wholly 
to  this  alleged  strain  in  the  population  con- 
cerned. 

I  will  not  delay  to  expose  their  methods  and 
the  falsity  of  their  claims.  I  will  merely  point 
out  that  a  less  extreme  and  more  defensible  form 
of  this  race- theory  still  finds  many  supporters. 
Dr.  C.  Woodruff/  and  Mr.  Madison  Grant,^  in  this 
country,  De  Lapouge^  in  France,  are  examples. 
They  claim  an  intrinsic  and  great  superiority,  not 

^  "The  Expansion  of  Races." 

2  "The  Passing  of  the  Great  Race." 

^  "Les  Selections  Sociales.'* 


CRITICS  OF  THE  RACE-DOGMA        29 

for  the  Germans  or  the  Teutons,  but  for  the  Nor- 
dic race  of  Europe,  which  is  represented  in  Ger- 
many, it  is  true,  but  not  so  strongly  as  in  other 
areas.  Anthropologists  are  now  pretty  well  agreed 
that  this  Nordic  race  really  did  exist,  and  that, 
mixed  in  various  proportions,  its  blood  is  still  widely 
represented  in  various  parts  of  the  world.  Without 
claiming  for  it  any  general  innate  superiority,  we 
may  fairly  inquire  whether  it  possessed  and  still 
exliibits  any  human  qualities  in  peculiar  degree 
or  combination.  But,  before  passing  to  examine 
the  evidence  for  differences  of  natural  endowment, 
let  us  glance  at  the  arguments  of  those  who  to- 
day represent  the  school  of  Mill,  denying  all  dif- 
ferences of  mental  endowment,  or  regarding  them 
as  so  slight  as  to  be  neghgible  factors  in  world- 
history. 

Of  the  many  critics  of  the  race-dogmatists,  I 
will  cite  only  the  names  of  M.  J.  Finot,  author  of 
"The  Prejudices  of  Race,''  of  Mr.  J.  M.  Robert- 
son, the  vindicator  of  Buckle,  and  of  Mr.  J.  Oake- 
smith.  Mr.  Oakesmith's  book  on  "Race  and 
NationaHty''  (19 19)  is  the  latest  important  work 
on  this  side  of  the  argument  and  well  represents 
the  rest.  These  authors,  who  deny  all  impor- 
tance to  racial  composition  and  differences  of 
innate  endowment,  may  conveniently  be  classed 


30    METHODS  OF  THE  RACE-SLUMPERS     ' 

over  against  their  opponents,  the  race-dogmatists, 
as  the  ^'race-slumpers."  It  is  characteristic  of 
them  that  they  in  the  main  avoid  the  straight 
issue  and  content  themselves  with  exposing  the 
errors  of  the  race-dogmatists.  They  make  much 
of  the  undeniable  truth  that  none  of  the  civilized 
peoples  of  the  world  are  of  pure  race,  but  rather 
are  all  alike  the  products  of  repeated  blendings  of 
races  and  peoples.  They  point  out  that,  if  any 
racial  peculiarities  of  mental  constitution  exist, 
they  are  so  obscure  that  no  one  has  been  able  to 
define  them  and  measure  them,  as  the  physical 
anthropologists  have  succeeded  in  defining  and 
measuring  certain  physical  qualities  as  indicators 
of  race.  They  point  to  the  fact  that  in  many 
instances  men  born  of  primitive  and  even  savage 
parents  have  shown  themselves  capable  of  acquir- 
ing all  the  elements  of  culture  of  the  most  highly 
civilized  communities,  and  of  playing  an  honor- 
able part  in  the  complex  life  of  such  a  community. 
They  delight  in  telling  us  how  the  native  children 
in  this  or  that  missionary  school  excel  their  white 
fellows  in  learning  the  A  B  C,  or  even  in  acquir- 
ing the  three  R's.  Especially  they  avoid  the 
direct  issue  by  demonstrating  at  length  the  obvi- 
ous truth  that  race  and  nationality  are  not  coin- 
cident.   This  is  merely  a  red  herring  drawn  across 


IS   ^'RACE"   SUBJECTIVE  ONLY?        31 

the  track,  to  put  us  of!  the  scent.     The  ''race- 
slumpers"    have    shown,   it  must  be  admitted, 
that  the  facile  generahzations  of  many  historians 
upon  race  and  national  character  have  been  of 
the  most  flimsy  nature,  often  erroneous  and  some- 
times absurd.    We  must  recognize  with  them  that 
these  flimsy  assumptions  have  worked  harm;  and 
we  must  agree  with  them  in  condemning  in  the 
most  outspoken  way  the  evil  work  of  the  more 
extreme  race-dogmatists.^ 

But  when  Mr.  Oakesmith  concludes  that  the 
practical  value  of  "race''  is  purely  subjective;  that 
"race"  is  merely  an  emotion,  hke  that  of  the  sol- 
dier who  is  proud  of  his  regiment's  history;  when 
the  "race-slumpers"  assert  or  imply,  as  they 
do,  that  all  men  are  born  with  the  same  mental 
endowments,  that  aU  human  stocks  are  of  equal 
value,  and  that  the  anthropologic  composition  of 
a  people  is  of  no  influence  upon  the  course  of  its 
history,  then  we  must  part  company  from  them. 
These  writers  have  shown  that  the  training  of  the 
pure  historian  does  not  quahfy  him  to  propound 

1  Oakesmith  (p.  58)  says  of  Chamberlain's  work:  "It  is 
false  in  its  theories;  ludicrously  inaccurate  m  its  asser- 
tions; pompous  and  extravagant  in  its  style;  msolent  to 
its  critics  and  opponents."  With  these  strictures  I  en- 
tirely agree. 


32  A  NEW  START  NEEDED 

sweeping  generalizations  about  racial  qualities; 
and  that,  when  he  undertakes  to  do  so,  in  entire 
ignorance  of  the  findings  of  anthropology  and 
equipped  only  with  the  fallacious  psychology 
which  is  embodied  in  common  speech,  he  cannot 
hope  to  arrive  at  the  truth.  They  have  shown 
that  the  historian,  if  he  would  rightly  interpret  or 
explain  the  course  of  the  history  of  peoples,  rather 
than  be  content  merely  to  describe  it,  must  go 
to  school  with  the  anthropologists,  must  take  ac- 
count of  all  their  findings,  and  must  wait  patiently 
until  we  shall  have  accumulated  more  data  and  a 
surer  insight  into  that  obscurest  and  most  difficult 
of  all  problems  with  which  science  is  concerned — 
the  mental  constitution  of  man  and  its  subtle 
variations. 

In  all  this  question  of  race  and  nationality  we 
need,  in  short,  to  make  a  new  start.  Instead  of 
throwing  ourselves  passionately  into  one  or  other 
of  the  opposed  camps,  the  camp  of  the  race-dog- 
matists or  that  of  the  race-slumpers,  we  must 
examine  the  evidence  afresh  with  strict  impar- 
tiality, unmoved  by  national  prejudice  or  by 
humanitarian  sentiment.  Especially  we  must 
disentangle  and  clearly  distinguish  between  na- 
tional character  and  racial  or  ethnic  qualities. 
For  the  confusion  of  these  conceptions  has  been 


NATIONAL  CHARACTER  33 

the  root  of  most  of  the  trouble.  National  char- 
acter, as  I  have  taken  some  pains  to  show,^  is  not 
the  mere  sum  or  average  of  individual  charac- 
ters or  quahties.  But  that  is  not  to  say  that  in- 
dividual qualities  play  no  part  in  shaping  national 
character.  Both  parties  have  made  the  mistake 
of  regarding  national  character  as  the  sum  or 
average  of  individual  qualities;  the  race-dogma- 
tists assuming  that  the  nation  in  all  its  doings 
always  expresses  certain  individual  quahties, 
which  they  assume  to  be  common  to  all  members 
of  the  nation;  the  race-slumpers  pointing  out  in 
return  that,  at  different  periods  of  its  history,  a 
nation  exhibits  itself  in  very  different  characters; 
for  example,  they  point  out  that  the  Jews  were  at 
one  time  an  agricultural  and  warlike  people,  but 
that  in  modern  times  they  have  seemed  very 
averse  from  both  agriculture  and  war;  and  they 
deduce  from  such  facts  the  conclusion  that  the 
quahties  of  any  population  are  completely  fluid 
and  indefinite. 

It  will,  I  think,  help  us  to  define  our  problem 
more  exactly,  if  we  state  it  concretely  in  the  fol- 

i"The  Group  Mind.  A  Sketch  of  the  Principles  of 
Collective  Psychology,  with  Some  Attempt  to  Apply 
Them  to  the  Interpretation  of  National  Life  and  Char- 
acter."   New  York,  1920. 


34  EXCHANGE  OF  QUALITIES 

lowing  way.^  Let  us  imagine  that  in  some  one  of 
the  great  well-defined  nations — say  the  British — 
every  infant,  throughout  a  period  of  fifty  years, 
could  be  exchanged  without  the  knowledge  of  its 
parents  for  an  infant  of  another  people.  If  this 
were  done,  at  the  close  of  the  period  of  fifty 
years  the  anthropologic  constitution  of  the  nation 
would  have  been  completely  changed  or  exchanged. 
Would  that  affect  the  future  course  of  its  national 
nfe?  If  so,  in  what  manner  and  degree?  If  we 
suppose  the  exchange  to  have  been  made  with  some 
other  nation  of  similar  composition  and  level  of 
culture,  the  race-slumpers — Messrs.  Finot,  Oake- 
smith,  Robertson — would  confidently  reply:  "No, 
it  would  make  no  difference."  Would  they  give 
the  same  reply  if  the  exchange  were  made  with 
some  remoter  people,  say  the  Japanese,  or  Ar- 
menians, or  Italians;  or  with  a  still  remoter  peo- 
ple, say  the  Hottentots  or  the  Bushmen  of 
southern  Africa,  or  the  Malays  of  the  Far  East? 
Their  principles  logically  would  compel  them  to 
give  the  same  reply;  but  I  fancy  that,  when  con- 
fronted with  the  issue  in  this  concrete  form,  the 
most  extreme  of  them  would  hesitate  to  do  so. 

^  As  I  did  some  twelve  years  ago  in  my  "  Introduction 
to  Social  Psychology,"  p.  330,  fifteenth  edition,  Boston, 
1920. 


INTELLECTUAL  ENDOWMENT         35 

They  would  probably  put  us  off  with  some  refer- 
ence to  physical  incompatibihty  of  chmate,  and 
so  forth.  For  these  writers  do  not  and  cannot 
deny  important  physical  pecuUarities  of  race;  their 
negation  appHes  only  to  differences  of  mental  en- 
dowment, in  respect  of  which  the  establishment 
of  the  facts  is  so  much  more  difficult. 

Let  us  see,  then,  what  evidence  we  have  bear- 
ing on  this  great  question  of  differences  of  innate 
mental  endowment.  And  we  will  begin  with  the 
problem  of  intellectual  endowment,  or  innate  ca- 
pacity for  the  development  of  intellect  or  intelli- 
gence. For,  though  the  moral  factors  may  be 
more  important,  inteUigence  is  a  valuable  quality 
and  not  to  be  despised;  and  it  is  more  easily  mea- 
surable than  the  moral  qualities. 

Let  us  notice  first  that  in  Anthropology  we 
have  to  deal  with  human  beings  m  mass,  and 
have  to  treat  our  facts  by  statistical  methods,  as 
far  as  possible.  Therefore  the  pointing  to  indi- 
vidual cases  of  the  presence  of  well-marked  quali- 
ties, even  if  such  cases  be  numerous,  is  out  of 
order,  and  merely  confuses  the  issue.  Consider 
this  for  a  moment  in  relation  to  a  simply  measured 
physical  quahty,  say  stature.  W^en  the  anthro- 
pologist asserts  that  one  population.  A,  is  shorter 
than  another,  B,  he  is  speaking  of  averages;   he 


s.a 


3 

a 


^     60     61 


ee     64     65     66     67     68     69     70     71     » 

Inches 


Figure  I 

A  normal  curve  of  distribution  of  stature  in  a  population,  the 
average  stature  of  which  is  66  inches. 


60   61    62    63    64    65    66    67    68    69    70    71    72     Inches 


Figure  II 

The  overlapping  curves  of  distribution  of  stature  in  two 
homogeneous  populations  of  which  one  (A)  has  the  average 
stature  of  63  inches,  the  other  {B)  69  inches. 


36 


STATISTICAL  METHOD  37 

does  not  mean  to  deny  that  tall  men  may  be  found 
in  A  and  short  men  in  B;  and  to  point  to  even 
extreme  instances  of  such  aberration  from  the 
average  does  not  invalidate  his  generalization.  If 
the  two  populations  contrasted  are  fairly  homo- 
geneous, the  statures  of  each  may  be  represented 
roughly  by  a  curve,  the  abscissae  of  which  repre- 
sent the  various  heights,  each  ordinate  the  per- 
centage of  the  population  which  has  the  height 
marked  on  the  horizontal  line.  These  are  the 
normal  curves  of  distribution.  Or  if  one  popula- 
tion is  mixed  or  formed  by  the  intermarriage  of 
two  stocks  of  imequal  stature,  it  may  show  a 
double  peak.^  In  either  case  the  average  stature 
is  a  significant  figure;  and  the  generalization  re- 
mains vaHd,  even  though  you  point  to  very  tall 
men  among  A  and  to  short  men  among  B.  In 
considering  mental  quahties,  we  must  keep  this 
way  of  viewing  the  facts  constantly  in  mind, 
and  must  avoid  the  fallacy  of  seeking  to  upset 

*  Such  a  double-peaked  curve  would  result  if  the  two 
populations  represented  by  the  curves  A  and  B  of  Fig.  II 
were  mixed,  and  the  measurements  of  stature  of  a  large 
sample  of  the  mixed  population  were  plotted  on  a  single 
curve.  Such  double-peaked  curves  of  physical  quahties 
have  been  found,  e.  g.,  the  curve  of  distribution  of  the 
cephahc  index  among  the  Greeks  of  Asia  Minor  (Ripley, 
"Races  of  Europe,"  p.  116). 


38        STATURE  AND  ENVIRONMENT 

generalizations   by   pointing   to    exceptional    in- 
stances. 

The  example  of  stature  is  instructive  by  analogy 
in  another  way.  When  two  populations  are  found 
to  differ  in  average  stature,  we  are  not  justified  in 
assuming  forthwith  that  this  difference  expresses 
a  difference  of  innate  constitution.  We  must  in- 
quire first  into  the  conditions  under  which  the 
two  populations  live.  If  A  lives  in  an  infertile 
area,  under  conditions  of  hardship  and  poor  nutri- 
tion, its  lower  stature  may  be  due  to  this  fact. 
For  there  are  clear  instances  in  which  low  stat- 
ure of  a  whole  population  may  be  traced  to  such 
causes.  Only  if  the  conditions  are  favorable  to 
the  full  development  of  stature  in  both  groups, 
does  difference  of  the  a^verage  stature  imply  dif- 
ference of  innate  constitution.  But,  when  such 
influences  have  been  taken  into  account  and  al- 
lowed for,  it  appears  clearly  that  the  stature  of 
men,  or  the  extent  of  their  growth  in  stature,  is, 
even  under  the  most  favorable  conditions,  deter- 
mined and  hmited  by  innate  constitution.  By 
taking  thought  a  boy  may  add  a  little  to  his  stat- 
ure, but  the  amount  he  may  so  add  is  strictly 
limited.  Further,  stature  is  hereditary.  Here 
again  the  statement  is  true  statistically;  and  the 
statistical  generaHzation  is  not  invaUdated  by  in- 


THE  VIEW  OF  THE  PLAIN  MAN      39 

stances  of  tall  sons  born  of  short  parents.  What 
we  mean  by  the  statement  is  that,  on  the  average, 
the  sons  of  short  forefathers  will  be,  under  equally 
good  conditions,  shorter  than  the  sons  of  tall  fore- 
fathers. Now,  apply  these  ways  of  thinking  to 
mental  qualities,  and  we  shall  j5nd  evidence  that 
intellectual  stature  and  intellectual  growth  are 
subject  to  generalizations  very  similar  to  those 
which  are  found  to  hold  good  for  physical  stature 
and  physical  growth.  This  is  an  all-important 
thesis,  fundamental  to  our  whole  problem. 

The  "race-slumpers,"  in  their  denial,  both  ex- 
plicit and  implied,  of  all  significant  differences  be- 
tween one  man  and  another  as  regards  mental 
quaHties,  are  the  champions  of  common  sense  and 
the  views  of  the  plain  man — views  in  which  the 
plain  man  has  been  supported  by  both  law  and 
medicine  until  very  recent  years.  For  the  plain 
man,  and  law  and  medicine  also,  accepted  the 
traditional  assimiption  that  our  mental  powers 
are  the  expression  of  a  supernatural  principle,  the 
soul,  miraculously  implanted  in  each  one  of  us  at 
birth;  and,  while  they  recognized  great  differences 
of  bodily  endowment,  they  ignored  comparable 
differences  of  mental  endowment,  with  certain  ex- 
ceptions. The  man  of  genius  on  the  one  hand, 
the  idiot  and  the  madman  on  the  other  hand, 


40    LIGHT  ON  MENTAL  ENDOWMENT 

were  mysterious  exceptions;  but,  apart  from  these 
exceptions,  all  men  were  born  equal,  and  all  dif- 
ferences of  attainment  were  attributed  to  differ- 
ences of  opportunity  and  education;  all  men  had 
equal  powers  and  equal  responsibilities,  and  must 
be  treated  as  strictly  alike,  unless  their  departure 
from  the  average  was  so  extreme  that  they  might 
claim  to  be  men  of  genius,  madmen,  or  idiots.  Of 
such  cases  common  sense,  the  law,  and  medicine 
washed  their  hands,  disclaiming  all  responsibility 
— ^for  they  did  not  fit  into  the  theory;  the  genius 
was  allowed  to  go  his  own  way,  the  madmen  and 
idiots  were  handed  over  to  special  institutions  and 
there  secluded. 

Very  recently  a  step  forward  has  been  made 
in  this  connection.  Medical  men  have  recog- 
nized that  idiots,  the  poor  creatures  whose  defect 
of  intellect  is  so  great  as  to  be  obvious,  as  it  were, 
to  the  naked  eye,  are  not  sharply  marked  off  as  a 
class  from  their  fellow  men.  They  have  sought 
and  found  many  transitional  forms  which  connect 
the  idiot  with  the  normal  or  average  man;  and 
they  have  devised  appropriate  terms  by  which  to 
denote  those  who  approximate  in  various  degrees 
to  the  condition  of  the  idiot.  The  law  has  come 
to  their  help  and  has  constituted  a  class  of  "men- 
tal defectives,''  persons  whose  intellectual  capaci- 


MENTAL  DEFECTIVES  41 

ties  are  so  poor  that  they  cannot  be  regarded  as 
fully  responsible,  but  who  must,  for  their  own 
sakes,  be  put  into  special  schools  and  institutions; 
because  they  cannot  profit  by  the  educational  proc- 
esses provided  for  the  normal  child,  cannot  com- 
pete on  even  terms  with  the  normal  man.  In  these 
schools  and  institutions  they  have  been  carefully 
studied,  and  the  following  facts  fully  established. 
Many  of  them  differ  greatly  from  the  idiot  (who 
generally  has  defects  of  brain  and  body  obvious 
to  the  eye)  in  that  to  the  untrained  observer  they 
appear  to  be  normal  persons;  and  their  brains  and 
physical  development,  even  to  the  skilled  observer, 
present  no  marked  peculiarities.  Nevertheless,  do 
what  you  will  for  these  people,  lavish  upon  them, 
from  their  earUest  infancy,  all  the  skill  and  care 
of  specialists  in  medicine  and  education,  and  you 
cannot  make  them  into  normal  adults,  fully  re- 
sponsible persons,  capable  of  holding  their  own 
in  the  world.  The  best  of  them,  after  being  care- 
fully trained  and  taught  some  simple  trade,  can 
go  out  into  the  world  and,  under  favorable  condi- 
tions, can  earn  a  living,  marry  and  produce  chil- 
dren, and  lead  more  or  less  useful  respectable 
lives.  Others  (and  there  are  all  grades  and  no 
sharp  divisions)  cannot  be  brought  to  this  level; 
if  they  are  sent  out  into  the  world  to  lead  the 


42  MENTAL  DEFECT  INBORN 

normal  life,  they  fail  and  become  paupers,  tramps, 
or  hoboes;  or  they  appear  again  and  again  in  the 
police  courts  for  trivial  offenses.  Others  are  so 
obviously  defective  that  they  cannot  be  allowed 
to  attempt  to  lead  the  normal  life;  and  they  are 
kept,  much  to  their  own  benefit,  in  the  appropriate 
institutions,  harmless  and  happy  and  often,  in  a 
limited  way,  useful.  These  people  illustrate  the 
truth  of  what  I  said  in  my  first  lecture  of  the  in- 
creasing demands  of  civilization  upon  the  qualities 
of  its  bearers.  In  earlier  times  and  in  simpler 
communities  such  people  undoubtedly  existed  or 
exist;  but  under  those  simpler  conditions  their  de- 
fects would  not  disqualify  them  for  the  common 
life.  In  a  simple  rural  community  they  may  rub 
along  fairly  well.  The  mental  defect  of  these  per- 
sons, their  defect  of  intelligence,  is,  then,  not  due 
to  lack  of  education  or  opportunity;  it  is  an  inborn 
constitutional  defect. 

A  second  great  fact  has  been  established  by  the 
modern  study  of  these  mental  defectives — namely, 
that  their  defect  is  not  only  inborn,  or  innate;  it 
is  also  hereditary.  In  most  cases  it  is  inherited 
from  similar  parents  or  grandparents;  and,  if  they 
produce  children,  it  is  likely  to  be  transmitted  to 
some  or  all  of  them.  We  do  not  yet  fully  under- 
stand the  laws  of  its  transmission;  but  one  fact 


MENTAL  TESTING  43 

seems  to  be  fully  established:  if  two  such  defec- 
tives marry  and  produce  children,  all  those  chil- 
dren will  also  be  "mental  defectives." 

In  recent  years  an  immense  amount  of  study 
has  been  devoted  to  these  cases  by  highly  compe- 
tent workers.^    The  facts  as  stated  are  estab- 
lished.   No  recitation  of  instances  of  boys  who 
have  risen  to  eminence  from  the  gutter  can  shake 
them.    May  we  suppose,  then,  that  these  mental 
defectives  form  a  class  sharply  marked  off  from 
normal  persons;  as  it  used  to  be  assum.ed  that  the 
idiots  formed  a  class  sharply  marked  off?    Or  is 
it  possible  that  intelligence  or  intellectual  stature 
closely  resembles  physical  stature  m  respect  of  its 
distribution  through  the  population  ?    Evidence  is 
fast  accumulating  to  show  that  this  view  is  true. 
An  important  step  in  mental  anthropology  has 
recently  been  made.    The  method  of  inteUigence- 
tests  (or  mental  testing)  has  been  devised,  and  in 
the  army  and  elsewhere  has  been  assiduously  ap- 
plied.   The  methods  have  been  proved  on  a  scale 
which  shows  that  the  results  achieved  are  "statis- 
tically" vaUd,  though  errors  may  and  do  occur  in 
individual   cases.    Popular   opinion   of   "mental 

1  See  Doctor  H.  H.  Goddard's  "Human  Efficiency  and 
Levels  of  IntelUgence,"  and  his  "Psychology  of  the  Nor- 
mal and  Abnormal,"  Princeton,  1920. 


44      A  SAMPLE  OF  MENTAL  TESTING 

testing"  is  naturally  divided:  those  of  us  who  did 
well  when  tested  naturally  think  it  a  good  system; 
those  of  us  who  did  badly  incline  to  the  opinion 
that  it  is  an  absurd  academic  fad.  But  the  evi- 
dence that  its  results  are  statistically  vaHd  is 
overwhelming. 

I  put  before  you  a  sample  of  the  results  obtained 
in  the  testing  of  a  large  batch  (many  thousands)  of 
recruits  from  a  given  area.  This  particular  sam- 
ple (which  I  owe  to  the  kindness  of  one  of  my 
pupils,  Mr.  N.  D.  Hirsch,  who  took  part  in  the 
conduct  of  the  testing)  is  especially  interesting, 
because  it  includes  both  white  and  colored  recruits, 
and  because  these  were  drawn  from  an  area  in 
which  facilities  for  schooling  were  relatively  poor, 
so  that  many  of  these  recruits  had  enjoyed  ver>^ 

TABLE  I 


A 

B 

c  + 

C 

C- 

D 

D- 

E 

W.  L.... 

2.6 

6 

12 

26 

23 

28 

0 

0 

W.  I  . . . 

.2 

1.4 

3-3 

14 

19 

37 

22 

2 

C.  L. .  .  . 

I.O 

1-4 

3-1 

9 

19 

39 

26 

0 

C.  I  . . . . 

•5 

•3 

•5 

3-2 

8 

33 

46 

7 

little  schooling  or  none  at  all.  The  Table  I  shows 
the  recruits  arranged  in  four  classes:  white  literates 
(W.  L.),  white  iUiterates  (W.  L),  colored  Hterates 


LITERATES  AND   ILLITERATES         45 

(C.  L.),  and  colored  illiterates  (C.  L).  The  indi- 
viduals of  each  of  these  classes  are  distributed  in 
percentages  under  eight  letters,  in  the  order  of 
decreasing  intelhgence. 

There  are  many  interesting  features  about  this 
table.  We  see  that  each  class  taken  by  itself  gives 
approximately  an  asymmetrical  curve ^  of  distribu- 
tion of  intelligence.  The  curves  for  the  white 
illiterates  and  the  colored  hterates  run  pretty 
closely  together,  indicating  that  these  two  classes 
show  approximately  the  same  degree  of  intelli- 
gence "statistically";  while  the  white  literates' 
curve  shows  considerable  shift  to  the  left,  and 
that  of  the  colored  illiterates  a  shift  to  the  right. 

You  may  be  disposed  at  first  sight  to  attribute 
the  differences  of  intelligence  disclosed  to  differ- 
ences of  degree  of  education,  of  schooHng;  but 
reflection  shows  that  the  assumption  will  not  fit 
the  facts. 

First,  the  tests  were  dehberately  designed  in 
order  to  give  no  advantage  to  the  more  educated 
man  as  such.  But,  you  may  say,  his  education 
has  made  him  more  intelligent.  Well,  perhaps  it 
has  in  some  degree.     But  if  education  is  the  source 

^  The  reader  can  easily  picture  for  himseK  the  curve  of 
distribution  implied  by  the  figures  for  each  of  the  four 
classes. 


46    THEIR  LEVELS  OF  INTELLIGENCE 

of  the  difference  between  the  white  literates  and 
the  white  illiterates,  and  between  the  colored  lit- 
erates and  the  colored  illiterates — what  has  made 
the  difference  between  white  and  colored  ?  Again, 
what  makes  the  differences  between  the  groups  A 
to  E  in  each  class?  They  must  be  in  the  main 
native  differences.  A  men  occur  in  all  classes. 
Further  evidence  of  this  may  be  seen  in  the  nature 
of  the  curves.  Each  taken  alone  is  asymmetrical. 
If  we  amalgamate  the  two  curves  for  whites  and 
the  two  curves  for  coloreds,  we  get  curves  nearer 
a  normal  curve  of  distribution.  But  both  curves 
will  still  show  a  too  abrupt  descent  on  the  right. 
This  is  partly  accounted  for  if  we  remember  that 
a  certain  number  of  young  men  were  rejected  at 
sight  as  obviously  unfit  to  serve,  including  all  the 
declared  mental  defectives.  The  addition  of  them 
would  bring  both  curves  nearer  to  the  form  of  a 
normal  symmetrical  curve  of  distribution.  Fur- 
ther, when  a  large  group  of  college  students  were 
tested  (three  thousand  men,  all  of  whom  had 
enjoyed  the  advantages  of  full  school  and  some 
college  education)  they  were  found  to  spread  out  in 
a  similar  wide  curve  of  widely  different  grades ;  the 
curve  is  not  so  wide  as  the  curve  representing  all 
the  whites  of  Table  I,  because  the  lower  grades 
(D  and  E)  are  missing  altogether.    It  resembles 


HEREDITY  DOMINATES  47 

closely  the  curve  for  the  white  literates.  Here  the 
educational  factor  has  been  practically  the  same 
for  all,  yet  the  degrees  of  intellectual  capacity  as 
revealed  by  the  tests  are  widely  spread. 

All  these  facts  point  to  the  one  conclusion, 
namely,  that  innate  capacity  for  intellectual 
growth  is  the  predominant  factor  in  determining 
the  distribution  of  intelhgence  in  adults,  and  that 
the  amount  and  kind  of  education  is  a  factor  of 
subordinate  importance. 

The  superiority  of  the  white  literates  to  the 
white  illiterates  is  due,  then,  not  wholly  or  mainly 
to  their  schooling,  but  rather  to  an  inborn  greater 
capacity    for    intellectual   growth.     Spontaneous 
selection  has  been  at  work  in  this  region,  where 
schooling  is  difficult  to  obtain;  and,  on  the  whole, 
those  boys  most  fitted  by  nature  to  profit    by 
schooling  have  obtained  it.    It  must  be  noted 
that  the  class  of  illiterates  includes  many  boys 
who  attended   school  for  a  few  years  only  and 
then  dropped  out.    Does  not  common  experience 
teach  us  that,  where  schooling  is  difficult  to  ob- 
tain, the  brighter  boys  who  find  themselves  mak- 
ing good  progress  in  school  are  those  who  are  most 
likely  to  continue  at  school?    And  is  it  not  prob- 
able that  the  brighter  boys  and  the  sons  of  the 
more  intelligent  parents  are  more  likely  to  enter 


48 


EDUCATION  AND   CAPACITY 


school  than  the  dullards  and  the  sons  of  unintelli- 
gent parents  ? 

Another    point    of    interest    is    suggested    by 
Table  II,  expressed  in  ^^  mental  age."^     The  dif- 


TABLE  II 

Mental  Age 

Difference 

W.  L 

14-5  \ 

12.2  J 
12. I  1 
I0.6  j 

2-3 

1.5 

W.  I 

C.  L 

C.  I 

ference  between  literates  and  illiterates  is  due 
partly  to  innate  differences,  partly  to  education; 
but  the  dijfference  is  much  greater  in  whites 
than  in  coloreds.  If  we  assume  that  the  attrac- 
tion of  the  schools  works  selectively  in  equal  de- 
gree on  w^hites  and  coloreds,  and  this  seems  a 
fair  assumption,  then  it  follows  that  the  higher 
the  level  of  innate  capacity,  the  more  is  it  im- 
proved by  education. 

Finally,  when  all  the  white  recruits  of  the 
whole  army  are  thrown  into  a  single  table,  they 
give  a  curve  conforming  very  closely  to  a  normal 
curve  of  distribution.  ^ 

*  A  conventional  scale  in  which  the  position  of  a  very 
intelligent  adult  is  expressed  by  the  figure  20. 
2  See  p.  37. 


PROVING  OF  THE  TESTS  49 

Such  findings  require  confirmation  by  the  more 
thorough  testing  of  practical  fife,  and  they  have 
had  such  thorough  confirmation.    For  example, 
of  a  large  group  of  college  students  who,  after 
being  tested,  entered  an  officers'  training-school, 
many    were    eventually    rejected    because    they 
proved  unfit  to  be  officers.    Of  those  who  scored 
A  or  B  in  the  tests  at  entry,  eight-ninths  passed 
through   the   school  successfully;   of   those  who 
scored  C  —  or  D,  seven-eighths  failed;  of  those 
who  scored  C,  50  per  cent  failed.    Further,  it 
was  found  that  men  who  scored  below  C  generally 
proved  inadequate  to  the  duties  of  a  non-com- 
missioned officer. 

The  official  report,  after  carefully  weighing  all 
the  evidence,  states:  "These  examinations  were 
intended,  and  are  now  definitely  knowTi,  to  mea- 
sure native  intellectual  abiHty;  they  are  to  some 
extent  mfluenced  by  educational  acquirement,  but 
in  the  main  the  soldier's  inborn  intelligence  and 
not  the  accidents  of  environment  determines  his 
mental  rating."  ^ 

1  "Army  Mental  Tests,"  by  P.  S.  Yoakum  and  R.  M. 
Yerkes,  1920,  p.  17.  Professor  S.  M.  Terman,  who  has 
had  large  exp'erience  in  the  application  of  mental  tests  to 
children,  writes:  "We  are  beginning  to  learn  that  all  of 
these  measures  combined  are  powerless  to  reduce  gready 


50  PROVING  OF  THE  TESTS 

the  number  of  over-age  children  in  the  grades.  Notwith- 
standing the  persistent  campaign  which  has  been  waged 
against  the  evils  of  retardation  for  the  last  dozen  years, 
the  number  of  retardates  remains  to-day  much  the  same 
as  it  was  when  the  campaign  began.  .  .  ,  The  facts  .  .  . 
point  fairly  definitely  to  the  conclusion  that  the  differences 
which  have  been  found  to  exist  among  children  in  physical 
traits  are  paralleled  by  equal  differences  in  mental  traits, 
particularly  intelligence.  It  will  be  shown  that  these  in- 
nate differences  in  intelligence  are  chiefly  responsible  for 
the  problem  of  the  school  laggard."  ("The  Intelligence 
of  School  Children,"  p.  24.) 


m 

I  HAVE  put  before  you  evidence  that  in  the 
population  of  this  country  innate  intellectual  ca- 
pacity (or  the  capacity  to  develop  intelligence) 
is  continuously  distributed,  in  much  the  same 
fashion  as  a  physical  quahty  such  as  stature.  It 
is  true  that  we  cannot  exactly  define  this  vague 
thing  which  we  measure  and  call  ''intellectual 
capacity.''  Is  it  a  simple  unitary  factor  which 
may  be  a  MendeHan  unit?  Some  psychologists, 
using  a  most  ingenious  statistical  method  (the 
method  of  correlation  and  the  hierarchy),  have 
argued  that  these  various  levels  of  intellectual 
capacity  depend  on  the  possession  of  more  or 
less  of  such  a  single  common  factor,  which  they 
call  general  intelligence  or  "the  G  factor";  and 
they  have  proposed  to  call  it  "intellective  en- 
ergy." ^  You  may  object  that  this  is  a  vague  no- 
tion, and  may  ask — What  exactly  is  this  intellec- 
tive energy  ?    It  is  fair  to  reply  that  it  is  something 

^  Cf.  especially  papers  by  Professor  C.  Spearman,  Mr. 
C.  Burt,  and  others  in  the  British  Journal  of  Psychology, 
and  Doctor  Maxwell  Garnet's  ''Education  and  World- 
Citizenship,"  London,  192 1. 

SI 


52  INTELLECTIVE  ENERGY 

which  we  can  measure  and  recognize,  though  we 
cannot  describe  it  or  adequately  conceive  it;  and 
that  in  this  respect  it  is  just  like  electricity  or 
other  physical  energies,  which  the  engineer  mea- 
sures and  controls  but  cannot  fully  understand  or 
adequately  describe.  But,  even  if  this  is  a  mis- 
taken view,  and  if  the  level  of  intellectual  capacity 
is  a  resultant  of  many  factors,  that  does  not  inval- 
idate the  conception  for  anthropological  purposes. 
Physical  stature  (or  the  capacity  to  attain  a  certain 
stature)  is  a  resultant  of  many  factors  (lengths  of 
many  bones),  yet  it  is  an  inborn  or  innate  quality; 
though  affected  by  environment,  yet  it  is  deter- 
mined by  heredity;  it  is  inborn  in  various  degrees 
in  individuals  and  in  races,  some  having  more  and 
others  less  of  it;  and  the  same  is  true  of  intellec- 
tual capacity. 

This  conclusion  is  distasteful;  for  it  sets  a  limit 
to  the  power  of  education.  It  may  seem  Hkely  to 
discourage  the  enthusiasts  of  education;  but  it 
should  not  do  that.  Even  though  the  effects  of 
education  are  limited  by  Nature,  it  is  of  the  high- 
est importance  that  we  make  the  most  and  the 
best  of  the  human  material  which  she  supplies. 
Those  who  resent  this  limitation  of  the  power  of 
education  are  very  apt  to  struggle  against  the  con- 
clusion by  an  argument  of  this  kind.    They  de- 


INTELLIGENCE  AND  RACE 


53 


scribe  instances  of  boys,  taken  from  a  deplorable 
environment  and  from  undesirable  parents,  who, 
having  been  put  under  good  conditions  and 
given  good  education,  have  become  useful  or  even 
distinguished  citizens.  But  even  a  large  number 
of  such  cases  can  do  nothing  to  invalidate  our  con- 
clusion. They  may  be  set  off  completely  by  cit- 
ing cases  of  the  opposite  type,  cases  of  boys  who, 
though  denied  every  opportunity  for  schooling, 
nevertheless  have  attained  to  the  very  highest 
levels  of  distinction — ^boys  like  Abraham  Lincoln 
or  George  Stephenson,  the  creator  of  the  EngHsh 
railroads. 

Let  us  look  now  a  little  more  closely  at  the 
racial  distribution  of  intellectual  capacity.  Un- 
fortunately, facts  are  few,  and,  though  I  would 
rather  choose  for  discussion  any  other  race  than 
the  Negro,  they  alone  of  the  colored  peoples  have 
been  studied  in  a  way  which  makes  possible  a 
comparison  with  the  white  population. 


TABLE  III 


A 

B 

c  + 

C 

C- 

D 

D- 

E 

Whites.... 

2.0 

4.8 

9-7 

20 

22 

30 

8 

2 

Coloreds. . . 

.8 

I.O 

1.9 

6 

IS 

37 

30 

7 

Officers 

55-0 

29.0 

12.0 

4 

0 

0 

0 

0 

54  NEGRO  INTELLIGENCE 

That  races  are  endowed  in  different  degrees 
with  innate  intellectual  capacity  is  implied  by  the 
difference  between  the  curves  for  whites  and 
coloreds  (Table  III).  We  have  seen  that  the 
curve  for  the  colored  literates  almost  coincides 
with  that  for  the  white  illiterates.  We  have  seen 
that  the  difference  of  level  between  the  white 
literates  and  illiterates  is  determined  in  part  by 
education,  in  part  by  natural  endowment.  Note, 
then,  that  whichever  factor  is  predominant,  or  if 
either  alone  is  responsible,  the  racial  difference  of 
native  endowment  stands  out  clearly. 

Now,  the  colored  men  of  this  country  are 
largely,  I  suppose,  of  mixed  white  and  Negro  de- 
scent. It  may  be  suggested  that  the  native  in- 
feriority of  the  colored  in  respect  of  this  quahty 
(intelligence)  is  an  evil  effect  of  the  cross-breeding 
of  these  two  :^id©ly  dissimilar  races.  That  is  a 
possibiHty.  But  facts  are  strongly  against  it. 
First,  the  colored  men  of  the  Northern  States 
showed  distinct  superiority  to  those  of  the  South, 
in  respect  of  their  performance  in  the  army  in- 
telligence-tests. Have  they  not  a  larger  propor- 
tion of  white  blood?  I  do  not  know,  but  I  sus- 
pect it. 

Secondly,  we  have  the  fact  that  some  of  the 
leaders  of  the  colored  people  deliberately  advocate 


NEGRO  INTELLIGENCE  55 

the  improvement  of  the  colored  people  by  further 
miscegenation.  A  fact  not  conclusive,  but  a  sig- 
nificant admission. 

Thirdly,  we  have  the  allegation,  frequently 
made,  that  every  colored  man  who  has  risen  to 
high  distinction  has  been  of  mixed  blood.  It  is 
perhaps  difficult  to  prove  the  rule;  but  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  find  exceptions.^ 

Fourthly,  we  have  a  few  studies  which  suggest 
that,  when  two  races  of  different  intellectual  ca- 
pacity are  crossed,  the  offspring  are  (statistically) 
intermediate,  and  that  they  approximate  to  the 
superior  race  according  to  the  proportion  of  their 
blood  derived  from  it. 

As  regards  the  Negro  race,  I  know  of  no  such 
study;  probably  the  descent  of  the  colored  people 
cannot  be  traced  with  sufficient  accuracy  for  this 
purpose.^ 

^  The  late  Professor  N.  S.  Shaler  was  a  close  student  of 
the  colored  people,  and  was  affectionately  disposed  toward 
them.  In  his  book  "The  Neighbor"  (Boston,  1904), 
which  bears  on  every  page  the  marks  of  the  spirit  of  jus- 
tice and  benevolence,  he  states:  "Ahnost  all  the  Negroes 
of  this  country  who  have  shown  marked  capacity  of  any 
kind  have  had  an  evident  mixture  of  white  blood"  (p. 
163).    He  mentions  a  single  exception. 

2  Professor  R.  S.  Woodworth,  in  an  article  on  the  "Com- 
parative Psychology  of  Races"  {Psychological  Bulletin , 


56  INDIAN  INTELLIGENCE 

But  we  have  two  recent  studies  of  Indians 
and  cross-breeds  of  white  and  Indian  blood,  made 
quite  independently  by  different  observers  and  by 
different  methods  in  different  places.  The  Indians 
studied  were  all  literates,  pupils  in  Indian  schools 
and  colleges.  The  results  of  the  two  investiga- 
tions agree.  One  observer^  concludes  that  the  In- 
dians of  mixed  blood  are  superior  in  intellectual 
capacity  to  the  full-blooded  Indians  by  one  full 
year  of  mental  age.  The  other  (Professor  Hunter, 
University  of  Kansas)  compared  white  children 
with  Indians  of  full  blood,  and  with  those  of 
one-quarter,  one-half,  and  three-quarters  of  white 
blood;  he  shows  that  there  is  a  large  difference  in 

vol.  XIII,  1916),  summarizes  the  findings  of  three  ob- 
servers, all  of  whom,  applying  "intelligence-tests"  to  white 
and  colored  children,  found  the  intellectual  capacity  of 
the  coloreds  to  be  (statistically)  inferior  to  that  of  the 
whites.  One  of  them  (Ferguson)  divided  the  colored 
children  into  four  groups,  according  to  the  depth  of  col- 
oration, and,  accepting  shade  of  color  as  an  indication  of 
the  proportion  of  white  blood,  concluded,  that  "in  the 
more  intellectual  tests,  success  increased  with  the  propor- 
tion of  white  blood."  Shaler  wrote:  "It  is  a  common 
opinion,  held  by  the  blacks  as  well  as  the  whites,  that  an 
infusion  of  white  blood  increases  the  inteUigence  of  the 
Negro,  while  at  the  same  time  lowering  his  moral  qual- 
ities." Ihid.,  p.  162. 
1  Mr.  T.  R.  Garth  (University  of  Texas). 


CROSS-BREEDING  AND  INTELLIGENCE    57 

intellectual  capacity  between  the  white  and  the 
Indian,  and  that  the  cross-bred  approximate  to 
the  white  level  in  proportion  to  their  share  of 
white  blood;  and,  after  carefully  considering  all 
the  possibiHties,  cautiously  concludes  that  the  dif- 
ference is  probably  due  to  race.^ 

It  seems  highly  probable,  then,  that  the  same 
rule  holds  good  for  the  mulatto,  and  that,  if  pure 
Negroes  were  compared  with  whites,  the  differ- 
ence of  intellectual  capacity  would  be  consider- 
ably greater  than  that  actually  found  between 
whites  and  coloreds.^ 

yi^This  conclusion  is,  I  think,  in  harmony  with 
the  indications  afforded  by  the  whole  history  of 
the  Negro  race — ^not  only  in  Africa  and  America, 
but  in  Oceania  and  especially  in  such  regions  as 

1  Summaries  of  the  work  of  Mr.  Garth  and  Mr.  Hunter 
appear  in  the  reports  of  the  meeting  of  the  American 
Psychological  Association  at  Chicago,  December,  1920 
{Psychological  Bulletin,  192 1). 

2  In  the  Journal  of  Applied  Psychology  for  19 19  Messrs. 
S.  L.  Pressey  and  G.  F.  Teter  report  "A  Comparison  of 
Colored  and  White  Children  by  Means  of  a  Group-Scale 
of  Intelligence."  They  examined  187  colored  and  2,800 
white  children  of  the  same  ages  and  drawn  from  the 
schools  of  the  same  area.  They  conclude:  "The  colored 
children  of  a  given  age  average  at  about  the  average  for 
white  children  (in  the  same  city)  two  years  younger";  and 
they  add:  "Analysis  by  test  shows  the  colored  children  to 


58      IS  INTELLIGENCE  HEREDITARY? 

Haiti  and  Liberia.  It  is  not  in  the  least  invali- 
dated by  the  statistics  we  so  often  see,  showing 
the  progress  of  the  colored  people  since  emanci- 
pation, and  by  the  acknowledged  fact  that  some 
men  of  color  have  shown  themselves  to  be  truly 
great  men.^ 

Now  let  us  turn  to  a  second  question.  These 
differences  of  intellectual  capacity  are  inborn; 
but  are  they  hereditary  ?  We  have  already  noted 
certain  facts  which  imply  the  positive  answer. 
If  the  differences  are  racial,  they  are  hereditary 
in  the  race.  But  within  the  same  race,  or  in  a 
population  blended  from  many  closely  allied 
stocks,  such  as  the  white  Americans,  are  they 
hereditary  ? 

average  below  white  children  of  the  same  age  on  all  the 
tests."  This  difference  between  white  and  colored  chil- 
dren is  the  more  significant,  if  we  take  into  account  the 
view  which  is  widely  held  and  which  is  probably  true  of 
many  if  not  of  all  cases,  namely,  that  inequaUty  of  adult 
intelligence  is  due,  not  so  much  to  more  rapid  development 
of  the  more  inteUigent  throughout  childhood,  but  rather 
to  an  earher  arrest  of  development  in  the  less  intelligent. 
^  Shaler,  who  made  a  Ufelong  study  of  the  Negroes  and 
who  wrote  with  warm  appreciation  of  their  many  fine 
qualities,  recorded,  nevertheless,  the  following  judgment: 
*'A11  the  facts  we  have  point  to  the  same  unhappy  con- 
clusion, that  the  Negro  considered  as  a  species  is,  by  na- 
ture, incapable  of  creating  or  maintaining  societies  of  an 


HEREDITARY  GENIUS  59 

Well,  we  have  seen  that  the  lower  levels,  the 
levels  of  the  mental  defectives,  are  hereditary. 
Further,  medical  men  have  shown  certain  other 
forms  of  ''mental  defect"  to  be  hereditary,  e,  g., 
certain  forms  of  insanity,  or  rather  the  predis- 
position to  these,  also  the  predisposition  to  epi- 
lepsy and  the  neuroses. 

At  the  other  end,  the  upper  end  of  the  scale, 
the  studies  of  Galton^  and  his  disciples  have 
shown  good  ground  for  believing  that  excep- 
tionally high  intellectual  capacity  is  hereditary. 
Standing  alone,  Galton's  reasoning  is  perhaps  in- 
conclusive; and  many  have  sought  to  escape  his 
conclusions  by  attributing  the  achievements  of 
the  sons  and  grandsons  of  great  men  to  their  su- 

order  above  barbarism,  and  that,  so  far  as  we  can  discern, 
this  feature  of  his  nature,  depending,  as  it  does,  on  the 
lack  of  certain  quaUties  of  mind,  is  irremediable''  ("The 
Neighbor,"  p.  139).  Again  he  wrote:  "Unlike  the  most 
of  the  people  who  come  to  us  from  Europe,  his  race  [the 
Negro]  is  not  provided  with  the  motives  that  lead  to 
safety.  His  elevation  and  maintenance,  so  far  as  we  can 
see  for  all  time,  absolutely  depend  upon  the  help  he  is  to 
receive  from  the  state-building  race"  {pp.  cit.,  p.  172). 
It  is  thus  apparent  that  the  results  of  the  recent  applica- 
tion of  the  exacter  methods  of  mental  measurement  bear 
out  the  opinion  of  impartial  judges  based  upon  long  and 
careful  observation  of  the  less  exact  kind. 
1  "Hereditary  Genius." 


6o    INTELLIGENCE  OF  THE  PLAIN  MAN 

perior  opportunities.  But,  when  taken  with  the 
rest  of  the  evidence,  Galton's  conclusions  seem 
to  me  to  be  in  the  main  incontestable,  for  they 
are  in  line  with  and  harmonize  with  all  the  rest. 
If,  then,  the  degrees  of  intellectual  capacity 
at  the  extremes  of  the  scale  are  hereditary,  it 
seems  highly  probable  that  the  same  is  true  of 
the  intermediate  part  of  the  scale.  But  have  we 
any  direct  evidence  of  this?  Is  there  any  evi- 
dence that  the  intellectual  capacity  of  the  ordi- 
nary plain  citizen,  of  you  and  me  and  Smith  and 
Jones,  is  determined  largely  by  heredity?  Com- 
mon observation  seems  to  point  that  way,  but 
it  is  inconclusive.  And  we  have  hitherto  only 
the  beginnings  of  a  direct  attack  on  this  problem. 
Professor  K.  Pearson^  has  produced  some  evi- 
dence that  mental  quahties  are  transmissible  in 
exactly  the  same  degree  as  physical  qualities.  He 
is  a  great  statistician,  but  the  mental  qualities 
he  dealt  with  are  vague  ill-defined  conceptions, 
and  his  conclusions  are  open  to  criticism  on  that 
ground.  Some  years  before  the  war  one  of  my 
pupils  at  Oxford  made  a  direct  attack  on  the 
problem,  and  the  results  are  significant,  though 
on  a  small  scale.     At  Oxford    are  gathered  as 

1  Biometrika,  vol.  III. 


INTELLIGENCE  AND   SOCIAL  STATUS    6i 

teachers  many  men  from  the  whole  British  Em- 
pire, highly  selected  in  virtue  of  intellectual  dis- 
tinctioru  Now  it  so  happens  that  in  a  certain 
private  school  in  Oxford  a  majority  of  the  boys 
are  sons  of  these  men.  We  therefore  set  out  to 
compare  the  intellectual  capacity  of  the  boys  of 
this  school  with  that  of  boys  of  another  school 
corresponding  to  your  pubHc  schools.  This 
"public  school"^  was  an  exceptionally  good 
school  of  its  kind,  the  teaching  being  in  many 
respects  better  than  in  the  other — the  private 
school;  the  boys  were  from  good  homes,  sons  of 
good  plain  citizens — shopkeepers  and  skilled  arti- 
sans, and  so  forth. 

Without  going  into  detail  I  may  say  summarily 
that  the  result  was  to  show  a  very  marked 
superiority  of  the  boys  of  the  school  frequented 
by  the  intellectual  class.^    The  result  is  all  the 

1  In  the  American  sense  of  the  term. 

2  Mr.  H.  B.  English,  who  conducted  this  research,  has  re- 
ported it  in  the  Yale  Psychological  Studies  for  191 7:  "Men- 
tal Capacity  of  School  Children  Correlated  with  Social 
Status,"  Mr.  EngHsh  concludes:  "Although  the  groups 
are  small,  they  are  exceedingly  homogeneous  and  thor- 
oughly representative  of  the  children  in  two  social  or 
ecoDomic  strata.  The  writer  does  not  hesitate,  therefore, 
to  predicate  these  results  for  the  children  of  the  entire 
classes  represented  or  to  conclude  that  the  children  of 


62  SOCIAL  STRATIFICATION 

more  striking,  if  you  reflect  on  the  following  facts : 
First,  every  boy  has  two  parents  and  inherits 
his  qualities  from  both.  Secondly,  it  has  not  been 
shown  that  xmiversity  dons  prefer  clever  wives, 
or  that  they  are  particularly  clever  in  choosing 
clever  wives.  There  is  room  for  difference  of 
opinion.  It  remains,  then,  highly  probable  that, 
if  the  wives  of  these  men  were  all  as  superior  in 
respect  of  intellect  as  their  husbands,  the  superior- 
ity of  their  sons  to  the  boys  of  the  other  group 
would  have  been  still  more  marked. 

The  result  suggests  a  question  of  very  great 
interest.  Does  the  social  stratification  of  society 
correspond  to,  is  it  correlated  with,  a  stratifica- 
tion of  intellectual  capacity?  The  positive  an- 
swer has  been  widely  assumed  on  general  grounds 
of  probabiHty  by  those  who  have  studied  heredity. 
Others  ridicule  the  idea,  and  produce,  as  usual, 
their  instances  which  do  not  conform  to  any  such 
general  rule.  The  result  of  the  research  just  now 
mentioned  supports  the  positive  answer. 

the  professional  class  exhibit  between  12  and  14  years  of 
age  a  very  marked  superiority  in  intelligence."  "Al- 
though he  is  not  prepared  to  say,  and  does  not  in  fact  be- 
lieve, that  environment  has  had  nothing  to  do  with  the 
superiority  of  one  group  over  the  other,  he  is  convinced 
that  the  hereditary  factor  plays  an  altogether  predominant 
part:\ 


SOCIAL  STRATA  63 

But  the  question  is  extremely  important,  and 
I  cite  therefore  the  results  of  another  direct  at- 
tack on  the  problem.  1  Miss  A.  H.  Arlitt  (of 
Bryn  Mawr  College)  tested  342  children  from  the 
primary  grades  of  schools  of  one  district.  Of 
these,  191  were  of  American-born  white  parents, 
80  were  born  of  Italian  immigrants,  71  were 
colored.  They  all  spoke  EngHsh  without  diffi- 
culty. The  Americans  were  divided,  according  to 
the  social  status  of  their  parents,  into  five  groups, 
corresponding  to  those  defined  by  Professor  Taus- 
sig: (i)  professional;  (2)  semi-professional  and 
higher  business;  (3)  skilled  labor;  (4)  semi-skilled 
labor;  and  (5)  unskilled  labor.  Groups  (4)  and 
(5)  were  amalgamated. 

The  results  show  very  marked  differences  be- 
tween the  groups.  They  give  four  dissimilar 
curves  of  distribution.  The  medians  (I.  Q.)  of  the 
four  groups  were  (i)  125,  (2)  118,  (3)  107,  (4)  92. 

1 1  may  cite  also  similar  results  obtained  by  another  of 
my  pupils  at  Oxford,  Mr.  Cyril  Burt,  who  concludes  his 
article  as  follows:  "For  all  these  reasons  we  may  conclude 
that  the  superior  proficiency  at  intelligence-tests  on  the 
part  of  the  boys  of  superior  parentage  was  inborn.  And 
thus  we  seem  to  have  proved  marked  inheritability  in  the 
case  of  a  mental  character  of  the  highest  *  civic  worth.'  " 
"Experimental  Tests  of  General  Intelligence,"  British 
Journal  of  Psychology ^  vol.  Ill,  1909. 


64    SOCIAL  AND  RACIAL  DIFFERENCES 

I.  Q.  stands  for  "intelligence  quotient/'  and  is 
commonly  used  as  a  convenient  abbreviation  for 
"intellectual  capacity  as  revealed  by  mental  test- 
ing." The  "median"  is  considered  to  be  a  rather 
more  satisfactory  figure  than  "the  average"  for 
the  comparison  of  one  group  with  another;  it  is 
commonly  not  widely  different  from  "the  aver- 
age." The  following  table  expresses  the  grades 
of  intelligence  attributed  to  the  various  groups  on 
the  basis  of  the  testing. 


TABLE  IV 

Americans  of  social  status  (i) 

...  LQ. 

=       I2S 

"          «     «         ii      (2) 

...:lq. 

=       118 

"     "        "      (3). *•..•'. 

...  LQ. 

=       107 

"          "     "        "      (4) 

...  LQ. 

=         92 

Italians 

...  LQ. 

=         84I 

Colored 

...  LQ. 

=         83 

All  Americans  grouped  together 

...  LQ. 

=             106 

*  If  this  figure  should  be  confirmed  by  further  research, 
it  would,  of  course,  not  justify  us  in  drawing  any  inference 
about  the  population  of  Italy  as  a  whole,  nor  even  about 
that  of  Southern  Italy,  from  which  region  most  of  these 
immigrants  have  probably  come.  The  recent  Italian  im- 
migrants are  probably  not  a  fair  sample  of  the  population 
of  Italy.  I  have  omitted  the  decimal  figures  from  Miss 
Arlitt's  figures.  I  am  much  indebted  to  her  for  sending 
me  details  of  her  observations.  Her  full  paper  has  not 
yet  been  published  (summary  in  Psychological  Bulletin^ 
February,  192 1). 

It  is  noteworthy  that  Professor  Terman,  a  high  author- 


INTELLIGENCE  AND  SOCIAL  STATUS     65 

A  third  research  of  a  similar  kind  points  to  the 
same  conclusion.^  Tests  were  made  of  548  chil- 
dren from  the  schools  of  one  city.  The  children 
were  arranged  in  four  groups  according  to  the 
occupation  of  their  father,  namely  professional, 
executive,  artisan,  labor.  The  results  are  stated 
in  terms  of  the  percentage  of  children  of  each 
group  who  scored  a  mark  higher  than  the  median 
mark  for  the  whole  number  of  548  children,  and 
are  as  follows:— professional  group,  85  per  cent; 
executive  group,  68  per  cent;  artisan  group,  41 
per  cent;  labor  group,  39  per  cent.^ 

ity,  has  found  similar  indications  in  working  with  the  chil- 
dren of  Italian  and  Spanish  and  Portuguese  immigrants. 
In  his  book  ("Intelligence  of  School  Children,"  New  York, 
1919,  p.  56)  he  gives  the  following  figures  for  the  I.  Q.,  or 
measure  of  relative  intelHgence  of  the  following  classes  of 
children  drawn  from  the  same  schools: 

Spanish 7^ 

Portuguese ^4 

ItaUan 84 

North  European io5 

American ^°^ 

IS.  L.  Pressey  and  R.  Ralston,  Journal  of  Applied 
Psychology,  vol.  Ill,  1919:  "The  Relation  of  General 
IntelHgence  of  School  Children  to   Occupation   of  the 

Father." 

2  Professor  Terman,  reporting  on  the  results  of  tests  ap- 
pHed  to  a  large  number  of  American  school-children,  states: 


66     INTELLIGENCE  AND  SOCIAL  STATUS 

We  have,  then,  pretty  good  evidence  that  ca- 
pacity for  intellectual  growth  is  inborn  in  differ- 
ent degrees,  that  it  is  hereditary,  and  also  that 

''Intelligence  of  no  to  120  I.  Q.  [this  range  is  defined  as 
'  superior  intelligence,'  the  bulk  of  the  children,  about  60 
per  cent,  ranging  from  90  to  no  I.  Q.]  is  approximately 
five  times  as  common  among  children  of  superior  social 
status  as  among  children  of  inferior  social  status,  the  pro- 
portion among  the  former  being  about  24  per  cent  of  all 
and  among  the  latter  only  5  per  cent  of  all.  The  group 
[i.  e.y  the  group  of  'superior  intelligence']  is  made  up 
largely  of  children  of  the  fairly  successful  mercantile  or 
professional  classes."  He  defines  as  of  "very  superior 
intelHgence"  those  children  who  scored  in  the  tests  more 
than  120  marks.  "Children  of  this  group  are  .  .  .  un- 
usually superior.  Not  more  than  3  out  of  100  (i.  e.,  of  all 
tested)  go  as  high  as  125  I.  Q.,  and  only  about  i  out  of 
100  as  high  as  130.  In  the  schools  of  a  city  of  average 
population  only  about  i  child  in  250  or  300  tests  as  high 
as  140  I.  Q.  In  a  series  of  476  unselected  children  there 
was  not  a  single  one  reaching  120  whose  social  class  was 
described  as  'below  average.'  Of  the  children  of  superior 
social  status,  about  10  per  cent  reached  120  or  better. 
The  120-140  group  {i.  e.,  of  very  superior  intelligence)  is 
made  up  almost  entirely  of  children  whose  parents  belong 
to  the  professional  or  very  successful  business  classes. 
The  child  of  a  skilled  laborer  belongs  here  occasionally, 
the  child  of  a  common  laborer  very  rarely  indeed.  At 
least  this  is  true  in  the  smaller  cities  of  California 
among  populations  made  up  of  native-born  Americans." 
("The  Measurement  of  Intelligence,"  p.  95,  New  York, 
1916.) 


MORAL  QUALITIES  67 

it  is  closely  correlated  with  social  status.^  Fur- 
ther, we  have  good  evidence  that  different  races 
possess  it  in  widely  different  degrees;  that  races 
differ  in  intellectual  stature,  just  as  they  differ 
in  physical  stature. 

We  have  considered  so  far  only  one  human 
quality,  intellectual  capacity.  This  is  very  im- 
portant. But  other  qualities  also  are  important. 
We  know  how  a  man  or  a  boy  of  normal,  or  su- 
perior, intellectual  capacity  may  fail  to  make  good 
for  lack  of  moral  qualities.  We  know  that  the 
moral  qualities  show  a  considerable  independence 
of  intellectual  capacity.  In  regard  to  them  the 
same  questions  arise.  Are  they  inborn  in  various 
degrees?  Are  they  hereditary?  Are  they  dis- 
tributed in  different  degrees  and  combinations 
in  races  and  in  the  strata  of  the  population  of 
such  a  country  as  this? 

These  questions  are  even  more  difficult,  and 
more  apt  to  provoke  acute  differences  of  opinion, 
than  the  similar  questions  regarding  intellectual 
capacity.     Experimental  psychology  has  hardly 

^  It  seems  highly  probable  that  degrees  of  intelHgence 
are  not  merely  correlated  with  degrees  of  social  status,  but 
that  intelligence  is  related  to  social  status  as  ground  to 
consequent  or  cause  to  effect.  For  yet  another  piece  of 
evidence  supporting  this  all-important  conclusion,  see 
p.  152. 


68 


ARE  THEY  INNATE? 


begun  to  contemplate  these  problems;  we  have 
to  glean  our  evidence  from  other  sources.  One 
small  piece  obtained  by  the  experimental  method 
seems  worth  citing  as  a  suggestion.  Mr.  K.  T. 
Waugh  applied  a  number  of  tests  to  students  in 
four  colleges  of  British  India  (Lucknow),  one  Chi- 
nese college,  and  some  American  colleges.  The 
tests  were  largely  concerned  with  memory,  and 
were  not  well  suited  to  test  intellectual  capacity. 
They  revealed  only  sHght  differences,  which  were 
slightly  in  favor  of  the  Indian  students — except 
in  one  quality,  namely  pov/er  of  concentrating  the 
attention.^    In  this  the  Chinese  exactly  equalled 


^  Mr.  Waugh's  report  was  made  to  the  meeting  of  the 
American  Psychological  Association  at  Chicago,  Decem- 
ber, 1920  ("  Comparison  of  Oriental  and  American  Student 
Intelligence")-  The  functions  tested  were  (i)  concentra- 
tion of  attention,  (2)  speed  of  learning,  (3)  association- 
time,  (4)  immediate  memory,  (5)  deferred  memory,  (6) 
range  of  information.  His  results  are  embodied  in  the 
following  table: 


Test 

Scores 

AMERICAN 

CHINESE 

INDIAN 

I 
2 

3 
4 

5 

6 

75 
66 

46 
58 
80 

23 

75 
62 

38 
15 

62 

45 

58 

54 
88 
24 

STRENGTH  OF   WILL  69 

the  Americans;  the  Indians  fell  decidedly  short 
of  them.  The  facts  that  in  other  tests  the  Indians 
equalled  or  excelled  the  Americans,  and  that  in 
two  tests,  which  measure  the  power  of  concentra- 
tion of  attention,  the  Chinese  equalled,  while  the 
Indians  fell  far  short  of  the  Americans — these 
facts  inspire  confidence  in  the  objectivity  of  this 
result.  They  go  far  to  show  that  the  differences 
found  are  not  due  to  racial  bias  in  favor  of  his 
own  race  on  the  part  of  the  observer,  or  to  condi- 
tions of  experimenting  unduly  favorable  to  the 
American  students.  This  result  seems  to  me 
extraordinarily  interesting  and  suggestive.  For 
what  is  this  power  of  concentrating  attention? 
It  is  essentially  will-power.  I  need  only  remind 
you  of  what  William  James  wrote  of  this.^  Now 
the  more  or  less  orderly  and  successful  govern- 
ment of  the  three  hundred  milHons  of  India  by  a 
mere  handful  of  British  men,  during  more  than  a 

Where  retentiveness  is  equal  but  speed  of  learning  un- 
equal, and  power  of  concentration  correlated  with  superior 
speed  of  learning,  we  may  safely  attribute  the  superiority 
in  speed  to  superiority  of  concentration. 

1  "Effort  of  attention  is  thus  the  essential  phenomenon 
of  will"  ("Principles  of  Psychology,"  vol.  II,  p.  562). 
Compare  also  the  discussion  and  similar  conclusion  on  this 
topic  in  Doctor  Maxwell  Garnett's  "Education  and  World- 
Citizenship." 


70  BRITISH  WILL-POWER 

century,  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable  facts  in  the 
history  of  the  world.  It  is  a  marvellous  achieve- 
ment. And  Enghshmen  have  marvelled  over  it. 
And,  when  they  have  sought  to  explain  how  it  has 
been  possible,  they  have  always  come  to  the  same 
conclusion.  They  have  recognized  that  the  na- 
tives of  India,  or  very  many  of  them,  have  much 
intellectual  capacity;  that  they  are  clever,  quick, 
versatile,  retentive;  that  some  of  them  have  bril- 
Hant  intellects.  But  such  observers  have  fre- 
quently expressed  the  opinion  that,  as  compared 
with  their  British  rulers,  the  natives  of  India  are 
relatively  defective  in  character  or  will-power;  and 
they  have  found  the  explanation  of  British  ascen- 
dancy in  this  fact.  Now,  at  the  very  first  attempt 
to  apply  exact  methods  in  the  comparative  study 
of  Indians,  this  opinion  finds  confirmation.  If  this 
conclusion  is  really  well-founded,  as  it  seems  to  be, 
might  we  not  infer  from  it  that,  if  the  qualities  of 
Indians  and  British  had  been  reversed  in  this  sin- 
gle respect — if  the  Indians  had  been  as  innately 
superior  in  will-power  as  they  seem  to  be  inferior 
— then,  not  improbably,  a  few  Indians  would  at 
the  present  time  be  ruhng  over  and  administer- 
ing the  affairs  of  all  Europe,  and  perhaps  of  all 
America  as  well?  It  is  a  strange  reflection.  It 
is  not  utterly  fantastic  and  absurd.     It  may  at 


THE  INDIAN   MUTINY  71 

least  serve  to  suggest  how  profoundly  peculiari- 
ties of  moral  constitution  may  affect  the  destinies 
of  peoples. 

In  this  connection  let  me  remind  you  that  the 
quelling  of  the  Indian  Mutiny  was,  before  all 
things,  a  triumph  of  will-power.  If  even  a  few  of 
the  British  leaders,  if  Havelock,  John  Nicholson, 
and  Baird  Smith,  and  one  or  two  others  had  failed, 
ever  so  little,  in  the  supreme  tests  of  wiU-power 
from  which  they  came  out  triumphant,  the  British 
would  have  been  swept  from  the  country,  and 
British  rule  in  India  would  have  been  brought 
to  an  end  about  the  year  1857. 


IV 

The  moral  factors  of  human  nature  are  very 
complex.  Let  us  turn  to  the  field  of  art,  and  see 
whether  we  cannot  find  in  the  arts  of  Europe  the 
expression  of  racial  pecuHarities  of  moral  consti- 
tution. The  problem  of  racial  manifestations  in 
Europe  would  be  simpler  if  we  could  assume,  as 
has  sometimes  been  done,  that  the  population  of 
Europe,  or  of  western  Europe,  represents  in  the 
main  two  distinct  races,  the  so-called  Latin  and 
Teutonic  races.  But  anthropologists  are  pretty 
well  agreed  that  it  is  derived  in  the  main  from 
three  distinct  races,  which,  although  much  mixed 
and  partially  blended  in  all  countries,  are  spread 
out  in  three  great  east- to-west  bands;  the  tall 
fair  Nordic  race  in  the  North;  the  short  dark 
long-headed  Mediterranean  race  in  the  South; 
the  darkish  round-headed  Alpine  race  in  between; 
that  is  to  say,  the  blood  of  each  of  these  races 
predominates  in  these  three  zones  respectively. 
In  spite  of  this  complication,  we  may  contrast 
the  art  of  the  South  with  that  of  the  North,  and 
inquire  how  far  any  constant  and  general  differ- 
ences are  attributable   to    differences   of    racial 

composition  or  anthropologic  constitution. 

72 


NORTHERN  AND  SOUTHERN  ART   73 

Mr.  A.  Gehring^  has  drawn  such  a  contrast 
most  skilfully;  and,  lest  I  should  seem  to  be  af- 
fected by  any  bias  of  my  own,  I  will  follow  his 
lead  closely,  attempting  to  give  you  the  pith  of 
his  observations. 

He  contrasts  the  art  of  the  Nordic  race  with 
that  of  the  Graeco-Latins  in  whom  the  blood  of 
the  Mediterranean  race  predominates.  Taking 
one  art  after  another,  he  shows  that  the  same 
essential  differences  appear.  In  all  arts  the  classic 
qualities  predominate  in  the  South,  the  romantic 
in  the  North. 

The  classic  qualities  are  clearness,  formality, 
circumscription,  simpHcity,  directness  of  appeal 
to  the  senses,  elegance,  symmetry,  proportion, 
observance  of  the  unities  of  time  and  place,  ra- 
tionalism, and,  I  think  we  may  add,  a  high  de- 
gree of  a  quality  only  recently  pointed  out  as  a 
fundamental  quaHty  of  works  of  art,  namely  the 
preservation  of  what  is  called  ^^  psychical  dis- 
tance"; that  is  to  say,  the  subject,  the  topic,  is 
kept  remote,  more  or  less  unreal,  and  subordinate, 
while  the  essential  of  success  lies  in  the  form  of 
the  artist's  treatment. ^ 


1  "Racial  Contrasts,"  1908. 

2  Cf.  "The  Esthetic  Attitude/'  by  H.  S.  Langfeld,  1920. 


74  THE  ROMANTIC  QUALITY 

The  romantic  qualities  are  the  opposite  of 
these — ^profusion  of  characters,  of  quahties,  situa- 
tions, objects  and  details,  and  of  suggestions  of 
all  these  things  beyond  those  actually  portrayed 
or  presented;  complexity  of  relations,  of  plot, 
of  design,  of  emotions;  indirectness  of  appeal, 
relying  upon  suggestion  of  a  wealth  of  imagery 
and  vague  meaning,  by  the  figurative  and  sym- 
boHcal  usage  of  all  material;  the  suggestion  of 
mystery,  of  the  unknown  and  unfathomable; 
all  prompting,  not  so  much  to  direct  and  purely 
aesthetic  enjoyment,  as  to  moral  and  mystical 
reflection  on  man  and  nature. 

To  illustrate  these  differences  I  will  only  ask 
you  to  compare  mentally:  classical  with  northern 
mythology;  a  classical  temple  with  a  gothic  cathe- 
dral; the  best  ItaHan  painting  with  works  of 
Rubens,  Diirer,  Turner,  Rembrandt;  ItaHan 
music  with  the  music  of  Wagner  and  Beethoven; 
the  classical  theatre  with  the  plays  of  Shakespeare 
and  Goethe's  Faust;  Homer  and  Virgil  and  Hor- 
ace with  Wordsworth,  Shelley,  Carlyle,  Coleridge, 
and  Meredith.  If  we  would  see  the  contrast 
in  its  full  degree,  we  must  compare  the  greatest 
works  of  the  greatest  artists;  for  in  these  the 
inward  nature  of  the  artist  is  most  truly  and 
spontaneously  expressed.    There  are  no  doubt 


CLIMATE  AND  ART  75 

exceptions  {e.  g,,  Michael  Angelo  and  Dante^), 
but  on  the  whole  the  contrast  is  striking  and  of 
the  same  nature  in  all  the  arts.  Other  writers 
have  pointed  out  the  same  differences,  and  some 
have  suggested  explanations.  M.  Boutmy,  for 
example,  would  attribute  the  difference  to  the 
influence  of  climate:  the  mystical,  reflective,  in- 
trospective quality  of  Northern  art  to  the  foggy 
atmosphere;  the  clear,  direct  appeal  to  the  senses 
in  the  South  to  the  clear  sunny  atmosphere.^ 
This  is  hardly  an  adequate  explanation.  For  we 
see  that,  when  a  predominantly  Nordic  people, 
such  as  the  English,  transfers  itself  to  another 
climate,  to  New  England,  where  it  enjoys  a  lati- 
tude and  a  brilliant  climate  comparable  to  those 
of  southern  Europe,  it  continues  in  its  art  to  ex- 
hibit the  same  pecuHarities;  they  are  nowhere 
more  strongly  presented  than  in  the  works  of 
Emerson  and  Whitman  and  of  other  American 
writers.  If  cHmate  has  anything  to  do  with  the 
production  of  the  difference,  the  effects  of  climate 

^  It  must  be  remembered  that  there  was  a  strong  infu- 
sion of  Nordic  blood  in  northern  Italy;  and,  though  it 
seems  to  have  left  few  physical  traces  at  the  present  time, 
it  was  probably  more  strongly  represented  at  the  time  of 
the  Renaissance  than  it  is  now. 

2  "La  psychologie  du  peuple  anglais." 


76  HUMAN  INSTINCTS 

must  have  become  impressed  on  the  mind,  trans- 
missible and  hereditary,  through  many  genera- 
tions of  influence. 

Mr.  Gehring  discerningly  remarks:  "It  is  con- 
ceivable that  vast  differences  in  national  activ- 
ities and  institutions  are  the  results  of  insignif- 
icant divergences  of  mental  structure.''  This  is, 
I  think,  very  true,  if  we  insert  the  word  seemingly 
before  "insignificant  divergences  of  mental  struc- 
ture.'' Is  it  possible  to  point  to  any  divergence 
of  mental  structure  between  the  Mediterranean 
and  the  Nordic  races  which  would  explain  wholly 
or  in  part  these  wide  differences  of  expression  in 
art?  What  constitutional  innate  differences  do 
these  express?  And  can  we  find  other  differences 
of  activity  which  seem  to  express  the  same  diver- 
gence of  mental  structure  or  moral  endowment? 
In  seeking  such  innate  differences  we  may  properly 
turn  to  the  instinctive  endowment.  We  have 
recently  come  to  recognize,  thanks  chiefly  to 
William  James,  that  human  nature  comprises  a 
number  of  distinct  instinctive  tendencies  or  in- 
stincts; that  these,  though  deeply  hidden  and 
disguised  in  the  adult  man,  are  nevertheless  the 
mainsprings  of  all  our  activities,  bodily,  emo- 
tional, and  intellectual;  that  one  man  differs 
from  another  in  the  native  strength  of  these  sev- 


INSTINCTS  AND  HISTORIANS  77 

eral  instincts.^  And,  though  it  seems  clear  that 
the  same  mstincts  are  common  to  the  whole  hu- 
man species,  it  may  be  that  one  race  differs  from 
another  (statistically)  in  respect  of  the  relative 
strengths  of  the  several  instincts. 

In  seeking  an  explanation  along  this  line,  we 
must  not  postulate  a  special  instinct  as  the  under- 
lying ground  of  every  special  form  of  national 
activity,  as  the  literary  historians  too  often  have 
done.-  We  may  only  invoke,  for  our  historical 
explanations,  instincts  which  on  other  grounds  we 
have  found  reason  to  believe  to  be  common  to 
the  whole  human  race,  and  which  conform  to 
the  psychological  and  biological  conception  of 
instinct. 

Let  us  notice  first  how  some  great  critics  have 
endeavored  to  define  the  essence  of  the  romantic 
quality  in  art.     Walter  Pater  said:    "It  is  the 

^  C/".  my  "Introduction  to  Social  Psychology,"  where 
the  part  of  instincts  in  human  Hfe  is  discussed  at  length. 

2  Renan  was  the  great  exponent  of  this  ad  hoc  invention 
of  instincts,  this  facile  mode  of  explanation  of  historical 
facts;  e.  g.,  in  his  polemic  against  the  Jews,  he  asserted 
that  they  were  devoid  of  the  instincts  for  mythology,  for 
polytheism,  for  epic,  for  drama,  for  poHtics,  and  for  mili- 
tary organization.  He  never  stopped  to  inquire  whether 
any  people  possess  such  instincts,  nor  even  to  ask  what 
he  meant  by  the  word  "instinct." 


78  ROMANCE  AND  WONDER 

addition  of  strangeness  to  beauty  that  constitutes 
the  romantic  character  in  art;  and  the  desire  of 
beauty  being  a  fixed  element  in  every  artistic 
organization,  it  is  the  addition  of  curiosity  to 
this  desire  of  beauty  that  constitutes  the  romantic 
temper."  Another  critic  gives  substantially  the 
same  definition  of  the  romantic.  "If  we  analyze 
the  feeling  we  shall  find,  I  think,  that  it  has  its 
origin  in  wonder  and  mystery.  It  is  the  sense 
of  something  hidden,  of  imperfect  revelation." 
(Hedge.) 

Curiosity  or  wonder,  then,  seems  to  be  the 
essence  of  the  romantic.  Now,  curiosity,  with  the 
emotion  of  wonder  which  enters  as  an  essential 
element  into  all  such  emotions  as  awe,  admiration, 
and  reverence,  seems  to  be  due  to  the  working 
within  us  of  a  true  primitive  instinct.^  If  we 
assume  that  this  instinct  is  stronger  in  the  Nordic 
than  in  the  Mediterranean  race,  we  shall  have 
an  hypothesis  which  will  partly  explain  the  differ- 
ence between  their  arts;  namely,  it  will  largely 
explain  the  romantic  quality  of  Northern  art. 
Is  there  any  other  difference  which  fits  this  as- 
sumption ?    Well,  curiosity  or  wonder  may,  with- 


1  Cf.  my  ''Social  Psychology,"  pp.  57,  129,  and  chapter 
XIII. 


THE  INCURIOUS  ROMANS  79 

out  exaggeration,  be  called  the  mother  of  phi- 
losophy and  of  science.  Now  modern  science  is 
very  largely  a  product  of  northern  Europe,  of 
those  countries  where  the  Nordic  blood  predom- 
inates; not  exclusively  so  by  any  means.  But 
note  this  fact:  the  Greeks,  who  founded  philos- 
ophy and  science,  were  probably,  in  their  great 
age,  compounded  of  the  Nordic  and  the  Mediter- 
ranean races.  The  Romans  were  almost  purely 
Mediterranean.  They  produced  great  men,  great 
lawyers,  soldiers,  administrators,  and  poets;  but 
no  philosophy  and  no  science.  For  four  hundred 
years  they  ruled  absolutely  the  fairest  part  of 
the  world,  in  a  state  of  high  civilization;  but 
they  invented  nothing,  discovered  nothing,  made 
no  progress  in  science.  Otto  Seeck,  the  historian 
of  the  decay  of  the  classical  world,  has  drawn  a 
vivid  picture  of  this  scientific  stagnation.^  He 
points  out  how  even  in  the  art  of  war,  on  suc- 
cess in  which  their  whole  empire  was  founded 
and  maintained,  the  Romans  made  no  progress, 
invented  no  new  weapons,  but  fought  in  the  same 
old  way  with  the  same  old  weapons  throughout 
the  centuries  of  their  predominance.  Note  an- 
other indication  of  the  weakness  of  their  curiosity. 

^  "Geschichte  des  Untergangs  der  antiken  Welt  " 


8o  NORDIC   CURIOSITY 

In  spite  of  their  supremacy,  their  high  civiHza- 
tion,  their  navy  and  mercantile  marine,  they 
remained  a  Mediterranean  power:  their  sailors 
penetrated  hardly,  if  at  all,  beyond  the  pillars 
of  Hercules;  while  the  barbarous  Vikings  in  their 
smaller  ships  sailed  to  Iceland,  Greenland,  and 
America,  and  perhaps  landed  on  the  banks  of 
the  Charles  River.  Here,  then,  is  further  evi- 
dence that  in  the  Mediterranean  race  the  instinct 
of  curiosity  is  relatively  weak.  But  wonder,  if  it 
is  the  mother  of  science,  is  also  an  essential  ele- 
ment in  rehgion,  entering,  as  I  said,  into  the 
religious  emotions  of  awe,  admiration,  and  rever- 
ence. It  follows  that,  if  our  hypothesis  is  correct, 
we  should  expect  to  find  some  appreciable  differ- 
ence between  the  religions  of  Northern  and 
Southern  Europe.    To  that  topic  I  will  return.^ 

Let  us  pursue  further  the  differences  revealed 
in  art.  For  the  hypothesis  of  a  stronger  dose  of 
curiosity  in  the  Nordic  race  will  only  partially 
explain  these  differences.  Are  there  indications 
of  a  similar  difference  between  the  Mediterranean 
and  the  Nordic  races  in  respect  of  any  other  of 

1  My  friend,  Mr.  Gilbertson,  has  drawn  my  attention 
to  the  fact  that  in  some  of  the  Norse  folk-tales  the  younger 
brother  triumphs  over  his  scornful  elders  by  reason  of  his 
insatiable  curiosity.    A  very  significant  fact. 


MEDITERRANEAN   SOCIABILITY        8i 

the  human  instincts?  I  seem  to  see  clear  indica- 
tions of  one  other  such  difference.  The  Southern 
Europeans  are  more  sociable  than  the  Northern. 
They  deHght  in  conversation,  in  coming  together 
in  large  masses,  in  expressing  their  emotions  col- 
lectively, in  great  collective  outbursts  of  applause, 
of  admiration,  or  of  execration.  In  all  ages  their 
civilization  has  been  essentially  an  urban  civiliza- 
tion; they  are  naturally  urbane;  the  city  has 
always  been  their  natural  habitat. 

Men  of  Nordic  race,  on  the  other  hand,  are 
taciturn;  they  take  part  in  social  gatherings  only 
with  difficulty  and  hesitation;  they  are  content 
to  hve  alone  in  the  seclusion  of  the  family  circle, 
emerging  from  it  only  in  response  to  the  call  of 
duty  or  ambition  or  war.  The  isolated  home  is 
their  invention,  their  dearest  possession;  and  the 
individualized  family  home  is  one  of  their  peculiar 
contributions  to  the  culture  of  the  world. ^  The 
facts  are  all  summed  up  in  the  phrase — "An  Eng- 
lishman's home  is  his  castle."  This  difference 
runs  through  every  form  and  detail  of  social  life 
and  organization.  We  may  safely  infer  that  it 
is  the  expression  of  an  innate  difference  of  con- 
stitution. 

1 C/.  "Histoire  de  la  formation  particulariste,"  by  Henri 
de  Tourville,  Paris,  1905. 


82  NORDIC   TACITURNITY 

What  is  it,  then,  that  impels  men  to  gather 
together  without  ulterior  purpose,  to  shrink  from 
isolation  as  the  most  intolerable  of  evils,  to  find 
satisfaction  in  merely  being  together  en  masse? 
It  is  the  working  of  a  distinct  and  now  generally 
recognized  instinct,  common  to  the  human  species 
and  all  the  gregarious  mammals;  it  is  the  impulse 
of  the  gregarious  or  herd  instinct.  We  have,  it 
seems,  good  reason  to  add  to  our  hypothesis  the 
assumption  that  this  herd  instinct  is  relatively 
weak  in  the  Nordic,  strong  in  the  Mediterranean, 
peoples.  We  now  have  a  fuller  explanation  of 
the  differences  between  the  arts  of  the  two  peoples. 
The  art  of  the  Mediterraneans  is  essentially  and 
most  characteristically  public  art,  the  art  of  the 
theatre,  of  the  orator,  sculpture,  architecture,  and 
poetry  for  public  recitation  at  festivals;  and  wor- 
ship is  essentially  a  public,  formal,  ritualistic  act. 
Their  art  is,  in  all  its  forms,  markedly  objective 
and  conventional;  and  "conventional"  means  that 
it  observes  generally  recognized  rules  which  ren- 
der it  easily  inteUigible  to  the  masses. 

The  art  of  the  North,  on  the  other  hand,  is  sub- 
jective, individual,  peculiar,  defying  or  ignoring 
all  conventions.  And  the  arts  most  characteristic 
of  the  North  are  reflective  nature  poetry  and  the 
novel    or    romance    which    reflectively    portrays 


SOUTHERN  VIVACITY  83 

and  analyzes  character;  both,  you  see,  forms  of 
art  fit  to  be  enjoyed  only  in  isolation,  by  the 
brooding  reader  who  is  content  to  be  moved  to 
laughter  or  to  tears  in  solitude. 

The  Nordic  race,  then,  is  more  curious  and  less 
sociable  than  the  Mediterranean.     In  it  the  in- 
stinct of  curiosity  is  stronger,  the  herd  instinct 
is  weaker.    But  still  we  do  not  seem  to  have  an 
hypothesis  capable   of   explaining  fully   the  di- 
vergences of  Northern  from  Southern  art.    The 
vividness  and  directness  of  appeal  of  Southern 
art,  its  more  passionate,  more  sensuous  quality, 
still  require  explanation.    These  qualities  we  may 
naturally  associate  with  a  universally  recognized 
difference  between  the  peoples  who  have  created 
these  arts.    The  Mediterranean  peoples  are  viva- 
cious, quick,  impetuous,  impulsive;  their  emotions 
blaze  out  vividly  and  instantaneously  into  violent 
expression  and  violent  action.    The  Northern  peo- 
ples are  slow,  reserved,  unexpressive;  their  emo- 
tions seem  to  escape  in  bodily  expression  and 
action  with  difficulty.    If  we  recognize  this  as  a 
constitutional  difference  between  the  Mediterra- 
nean and  the  Nordic  races,  we  complete  the  hy- 
pothesis needed  for  the  explanation  of  their  diver- 
gences in  art. 
But  can  v/e  form  any  valid  conception  of  such 


84  NORDIC  ENERGY 

a  constitutional  difference?  It  is  sometimes  as- 
sumed that  in  the  Southern  peoples  the  emotions 
and  their  impulses  are  inherently  stronger  than 
in  the  Northern.  This  seems  to  me  entirely  fal- 
lacious. If  it  were  true,  we  should  except  to  find 
the  Northern  peoples  comparatively  inert,  placid, 
sluggish,  inactive.  But  see  what  they  have  done: 
their  restless  energy  is  chiefly  responsible  for  the 
transformation  of  the  modern  world;  they  pri- 
marily have  peopled  North  America  and  Aus- 
tralia, governed  India,  penetrated  to  the  heart  of 
Africa,  settled  in  every  island  of  Malaysia  and  the 
Pacific  Ocean,  scaled  almost  all  the  great  moun- 
tains and  reached  the  North  and  the  South  Poles. 

It  is  obvious  that  no  difference  in  the  relative 
strength  of  any  instinct  could  account  for  the 
difference  we  are  now  considering;  for  the  differ- 
ence finds  expression  in  all  emotions  and  in  all 
modes  of  activity.  It  seems  to  be  a  perfectly 
general  difference  of  constitution;  whereas  all 
instincts  are  more  or  less  specific. 

WeU,  modern  medicine  comes  to  our  help  and 
suggests  the  true  explanation.  The  modem  psy- 
chological study  of  the  so-called  nervous  disorders 
has  shown  that  the  functional  nervous  disorders 
are  really  of  mental  origin,  and  that  they  fall  into 
two  distinct  groups,  of  which  hysteria  and  neu- 


EXTROVERTS  AND  INTROVERTS   85 

rasthenia  are  the  types,  respectively.    Now  it  is 
found  that  men  and  women  who  break  down  imder 
nervous  strain  or  emotional  shocks  tend  to  de- 
velop symptoms  of  the  one  or  other  kind,  accord- 
ing as  they  belong  to  one  or  other  of  two  con- 
stitutional types.     We  owe  the  clear  distinction 
of  these  two  types  to  Doctor  C.  G.  Jung  of  Zurich.^  , 
He  calls  them  the  extrovert  and  the  introvert 
types.    The   well-marked    extroverts    are    those 
whose  emotions  flow  out  easily  into  bodily  expres- 
sion and  action.    They  are  the  vivid,  vivacious, 
active  persons  who  charm  us  by  their  ease  and 
freedom  of  expression,  their  frankness,  their  quick 
sympathetic  responses.    They  are  Httle  given  to 
introspective   brooding;    they    remain   relatively 
ignorant  of  themselves;  for  they  are  essentially 
objective,  they  are  interested  directly  and  prima- 
rily in  the  outer  world  about  them.     When  and 
if  they  break  down  under  strain,  their  trouble 
takes  on  the  hysteric  type,  the  form  of  dissocia- 
tions, paralyses,  anesthesias,  amnesias;  in  spite 
of  which  they  may  remain  cheerful,  active,  and 
interested  in  the  world. 

The  introvert,  on  the  other  hand,  is  slow  and 
reserved  in  the  expression  of  his  emotions.     He 
has  difficulty  in  adequately  expressing  himself. 
1"  Analytic  Psychology." 


86  CONSTITUTIONAL  TYPES 

His  nervous  and  mental  energies,  instead  of  flow- 
ing out  freely  to  meet  and  play  upon  the  outer 
world,  seem  apt  to  turn  inward,  determining  him 
to  brooding,  reflection,  deliberation  before  ac- 
tion. And,  when  he  is  subject  to  strain,  his  ener- 
gies are  absorbed  in  internal  conflicts;  he  be- 
comes dead  to  the  outer  world,  languid,  absorbed, 
self-centred,  and  full  of  vague  distress. 

Now,  this  difference  of  constitutional  type  is 
not  due  to  difference  of  environment  and  train- 
ing. Within  the  same  family  you  may  see  well- 
marked  examples  of  both  types,  though  all  have 
been  subjected  to  almost  identical  environmental 
influences.  The  difference  between  the  two  types 
seems  to  be  the  expression  of  a  subtle  difference 
of  physiological  constitution  which  pervades  ev- 
ery part  of  the  nervous  system.  What  exactly 
it  consists  in  we  do  not  know.  Many  years  ago  I 
threw  out  an  hypothesis  as  to  the  nature  of  this 
peculiarity  of  nervous  constitution  and  I  believe 
it  is  essentiaUy  correct  or  on  the  right  lines.  But 
it  is  too  technical  a  matter  to  discuss  here.  Suf- 
fice it  to  say  that  it  seems  to  explain  the  facts, 
and  the  suggested  peculiarity  is  one  which  may 
well  be  transmitted  hereditarily.^ 

1  "The  Conditions  of  Fatigue  in  the  Nervous  System," 
Brain,  vol.  XXXII,  1909. 


NERVOUS  TROUBLES  87 

Now,  physicians  who  have  speciahzed  in  nervous 
disorders  in  both  the  North  and  South  of  Europe 
assure  me  that  the  Northerners  are  much  more 
commonly  subject  to  the  neurasthenic  type  of 
trouble,  the  Southerners  to  the  hysteric  type. 
This  fits  exactly  with  the  universally  recognized 
difference  between  North  and  South. 

We  may  fairly  complete  our  hypothesis  by 
assuming  that  the  Mediterranean  race  is  con- 
stitutionally extrovert,  the  Nordic  race  consti- 
tutionally introvert.  Of  course,  exceptions  may 
occur;  the  statement  can  be  only  statistically 
true;  and  especially,  in  view  of  the  fact  of  the  wide 
mixture  of  blood  of  the  two  races,  and  the  peculiar 
mixture  of  innate  qualities  that  results  from  race 
blending,  we  may  expect  many  mixed  and  ill- 
defined  types;  which  is  what  we  actually  find. 

We  seem  now  to  have  completed  our  hypoth- 
esis for  the  explanation  of  the  divergence  of  the 
North  from  the  South  of  Europe  in  respect  of 
their  artistic  expressions.  The  Nordic  race  is 
constitutionally  introvert;  it  is  strong  in  the  in- 
stinct of  curiosity,  the  root  of  wonder;  weak  in 
the  herd  instinct,  the  root  of  sociabiHty.  In  the 
Mediterranean  race  these  peculiarities  are  re- 
versed; it  is  extrovert,  weak  in  curiosity,  strong 
in  sociability. 


SS  THE  ALPINE   RACE 

If  our  hypothesis  is  correct  we  should  expect 
to  find  other  differences  between  North  and  South 
to  the  explanation  of  which  it  may  be  applied.^ 
In  discussing  art  it  was  possible  to  leave  out  of 
our  view  the  third  great  race  which  has  contrib- 
uted a  full  share  of  its  blood  to  the  population 
of  modern  Europe,  namely  the  AJpine  race,  which 
geographically  occupies,  or  predominates  in,  the 
middle  zone.  For  the  art  of  this  race  (the  art  of 
the  Slavs,  and  that  generally  known  as  Celtic) 
has  been  somewhat  apart  from  the  two  great 
rival  traditions,  the  classical  and  the  romantic. 
But  at  this  point  we  must  bring  this  race  into  our 

^  One  such  striking  difference,  which  may  be  noted  in 
passing,  is  the  greater  proneness  to  alcohohc  intoxication 
of  the  Nordic  peoples  and  the  great  sobriety  in  this  respect 
of  the  Mediterranean  peoples.  Sir  Archdall  Reid  (in  his 
''Present  Evolution  of  Man")  has  argued  that  the  greater 
sobriety  of  the  populations  of  the  South  of  Europe  is  the 
consequence  of  their  longer  usage  of  alcohohc  liquors, 
which  he  supposes  to  have  weeded  out  from  them  all 
strains  peculiarly  susceptible  to  their  influence.  It  seems 
to  me  more  probable  that  the  explanation  is  to  be  found 
in  the  introvert  quaUty  of  the  Nordic  race.  Alcohol  acts 
on  the  nervous  system  in  a  way  which  renders  it  tempo- 
rarily extrovert;  and  thus  for  the  introvert  it  brings  relief 
from  the  brooding  melancholy  to  which  he  is  constitution- 
ally liable;  it  enables  him  to  enjoy  the  freedom  of  emo- 
tional expression  which  in  his  normal  condition  is  denied 
him  by  his  introvert  constitution. 


ALPINE   QUALITIES  89 

discussion.  It  must  suffice  to  say  that,  in  both 
physical  and  mental  quaHties,  it  seems  to  stand 
between  the  Mediterranean  and  the  Nordic  races. 
Physically  it  is  distinguished  from  the  Mediter- 
ranean race  by  having  a  round  rather  than  a  long 
head.  Mentally,  it  seems  to  be  introvert  rather 
than  extrovert,  but  not  so  extremely  introvert 
as  the  Nordic  race.  It  has  in  common  with  the 
Mediterranean  race  a  high  degree  of  sociability; 
and  is,  I  think,  though  here  I  speak  less  confi- 
dently, like  it,  relatively  weak  in  curiosity. 

The  Nordic  race  is,  then,  to  be  distinguished 
physically  from  the  other  two  races  by  fair 
hair  and  complexion  and  by  high  stature.  And 
it  seems  to  be  unlike  both  of  them  in  respect  of 
the  three  mental  quahties  we  have  defined.  These 
two  physical  qualities  serve  as  the  indicators  of 
the  blood  of  this  race;  and  maps  of  the  physical 
qualities  of  the  European  peoples  show  clearly  the 
regions  of  its  predominance.  Are  there  any  maps 
revealing  a  similar  distribution  of  mental  or  moral 
peculiarities?  I  will  put  before  you  some  roaps 
which  show  the  distribution  of  certain  physical 
and  moral  traits. 

The  first  map  shows  that  fair  complexion  pre- 
dominates in  the  northeastern  part  of  France,  and 
that  this  area  of  '^ fairness"  is  prolonged  in  two 


90 


PHYSICAL  QUALITIES 


Brunetness 
France 


^Relative 

hi  ORDER. 
\t^Ji  op     ' 

■  DEPARTMENTS 


AFIER  TOPINARO 

ZOO.OOO  OBSRVIUIOKS 


directions,  namely  southwest  ward  to  Bordeaux 
and  southward  along  the  valley  of  the  Rhone. 
The  map  of  the  distribution  of  stature  agrees 
closely  with  this,  showing  predominance  of  tall 
stature  in  the  same  regions.^  Historical  and 
archceological  evidence  shows  that  these  are  the 
regions  in  which  the  Nordic  tribes  estabhshed 

*  C/.  Professor  Z.  Ripley's  "Races  of  Europe."  I  am 
indebted  to  Professor  Ripley  for  his  permission  to  repro- 
duce these  maps. 


SUICIDE 

INTENSITY^  SUiaOE 
rRANCE: 

After  MOB5ELL1  6z, 


91 


themselves  most  fully,  driving  out  or  extermi- 
nating in  large  measure  their  forerunners  of  Al- 
pine and  Mediterranean  race. 

Now  examine  the  map  shomng  the  relative  fre- 
quency of  suicide  in  the  provinces  of  modern 
France.  You  see  that  this  map  corresponds  very 
closely  with  the  other.  Wherever  the  physical 
marks  (fair  complexion  and  high  stature)  of  the 
Nordic  race  predominate,  there  suicide  is  frequent, 
and  conversely. 


92 


SUICIDE  AND  RACE 


The  suggestion  is  that  suicide  is  frequent  in 
proportion  to  the  predominance  of  Nordic  blood. 
E.  MorselH  (the  Italian  alienist)  has  pointed  out 
this  correlation  and  has  deduced  the  conclusion 
that  the  Nordic  race  is  more  apt  at  suicide  than 
the  other  European  races.  Cautious  anthropolo- 
gists (including  Professor  Ripley,  from  whose  val- 
uable book  on  "The  Races  of  Europe''  I  have 
copied  these  maps)  have  refused  to  follow  him. 
It  is  necessary  to  be  something  of  a  psychologist, 
perhaps,  if  one  is  to  appreciate  the  evidence.  For 
other  men  of  science,  even  the  medical  men,  are 
systematically  trained  to  ignore  the  mind  of  man. 
For  them  it  is  something  unreal,  because  intangi- 
ble. They  are  willing  to  attribute  such  a  phe- 
nomenon as  the  prevalence  of  suicide  in  an  area 
to  climate,  or  diet,  or  geological  formation,  or  the 
electric  disturbances  of  the  atmosphere,  for  all 
these  are  "real."  But  to  attribute  it  to  mental 
peculiarities  or  conditions  seems  to  them  pure 
mythology. 

Well,  Morselli  traced  and  mapped  the  frequency 
of  suicide  in  all  parts  of  Europe.  It  must  be  ad- 
mitted that  he  relied  too  much  upon  language  as 
a  criterion  of  race;  and  he  showed  very  convinc- 
ingly that  there  is  a  very  high  correlation  between 
suicide  and  the  use  of  the  German  language,  that 


SUICIDE  IN  FRANCE  93 

those  who  speak  German  are  very  apt  to  commit 
suicide.  Some  of  you  may  at  once  infer  that  the 
language  is  the  cause  of  the  suicide;  and  perhaps 
it  would  be  difficult  completely  to  refute  such  a 
simple  and  attractive  theory.  But,  looking  at 
the  facts  more  widely,  we  see  that  the  frequency 
of  suicide  is  correlated  not  only,  or  chiefly,  with 
language,  but  rather  with  the  physical  qu  ah  ties  of 
the  Nordic  race.  Take  France;  the  correlation  is 
close.  Professor  Ripley  suggests  it  is  due  to  the 
fact  that  the  Nordics  occupy  the  regions  of  great- 
est industrial  activity  and  prosperity,  where  larger 
towns  are  frequent.  But  that  they  occupy  these 
regions  is  a  fact  which  in  turn  requires  explana- 
tion. Turn,  then,  to  another  detailed  map — that 
of  England. 

Notice  that  there  are  three  regions  in  which 
suicide  is  least  frequent,  namely  Wales,  Corn- 
wall, and  an  area  lying  a  little  to  the  north  of 
London.  All  three  are  areas  in  which  the  Nordic 
blood  is  but  little  represented.  The  Welsh  repre- 
sent the  pre-Saxon  population,  with  Httle  admix- 
ture of  Nordic  blood;  and  that  they  are  mentally 
very  different  from  the  English  is  a  fact  of  com- 
mon knowledge.  Very  striking  is  the  contrast 
between  Cornwall  and  Devonshire.  Every  sum- 
mer visitor  to  these  counties  notices  the  very 


94 


SUICIDE  IN  ENGLAND 


MILUO^f. 

WHADtTANTS 


ENCjLAND 

^6fin  MORSELU  '£^0 


marked  mental  differences  between  their  popula- 
tions. Devonshire  is  a  typically  English  county. 
Its  population  has  played  a  prominent  part  in 
many  of  the  most  characteristically  EngHsh  activi- 
ties, especially  in  sea-roving,  in  colonial  adven- 
ture, and  pioneering.  It  is  the  traditional  home 
of  the  English  "sea-kings."  The  population  of 
Cornwall,  like  that  of  Wales,  is  in  the  main  de- 
scended from  the  British  tribes  which  were  driven 
westward  by  the  Anglo-Saxon  invaders.    Among 


SUICIDE  IN  ENGLISH  COUNTIES      95 

them  the  ancient  British  language  has  only  re- 
cently died  out.    In  respect  of  all  other  conditions, 
the  two  counties  are  extremely  similar,  save  that 
Devonshire  is  rather  more  fertile.    Both  are  pre- 
dominantly agricultural  and  pastoral  and  seafar- 
ing, with  an  equable  mild  climate.    Yet,  as  regards 
the  frequency  of  suicide,  we  see  the  large  differ- 
ence indicated  by  the  map.    Perhaps  even  more 
strikmg  is  the  small  area  north  of  London.    The 
physical  anthropologists  have  shown  that,  owing 
to  circumstances  not  fuUy  understood,  the  popu- 
lation of  this  region  shows  predominance  of  the 
physical  qualities  of  the  pre-Enghsh  or  British 
tribes.    It  seems  to  be  an  island  of  the  old  British 
population,  surrounded  by,  but  not  displaced  or 
swamped  by,  the  tide  of  Anglo-Saxon  invasion. 
And  in  this  smaU  island  of  population,  the  physi- 
cal and  economic  conditions  of  which  differ  hardly 
appreciably  from  those  of  the  surrounding  coun- 
ties, suicide  remams  at  its  lowest  rate,  namely 
that  of  Wales  and  Cornwall. 

On  the  other  hand,  suicide  reaches  its  highest 
rate  in  Sussex,  the  population  of  which  county  is 
perhaps  the  most  purely  and  t^picaUy  Saxon  of 
all  England. 

Now  consider  Table  V. 


96  SUICIDE  IN  EUROPE 

TABLE  V 

ANNUAL  SUICIDES  PER  MILLION  POPULATION  ^ 

Denmark 268 

Scandinavia 127 

N.  Germany 150 

S.  Germany 165 

England 72 

S.  Australia 90 

Wales 52 

Ireland 10 

Spain 17 

Russia 30 

N.  Italy 46 

S.  Italy 26 

It  will  be  seen  that  suicide  is  most  frequent  in 
the  Scandinavian  countries,  those  of  which  the 
population  is  most  purely  Nordic;  moderately 
high  in  England  and  South  Australia,  where  the 
population  shows  a  fair  proportion  of  the  physical 
qualities  of  the  Nordic  race.  The  rate  is  very 
low  in  Ireland,  in  spite  of  all  the  political  troubles 
and  economic  distress  of  her  people;  and  very  low 
in  Spain,  South  Italy,  and  Russia,  where  the 
Nordic  blood  is  scarce. 

In  view  of  all  these  facts,  we  can  hardly  doubt 
that  the  racial  hypothesis  contains  much  truth. 
Of  course,  other  factors  than  race  are  important. 


This  table  is  extracted  from  E.  Morselli's  "Le  Suicide." 


SUICIDE  AND   HOMICIDE  97 

Germany,  north  and  south,  has  undue  pre-emi- 
nence; it  may  be  due  to  language  or  government 
or  other  lack  of  harmony.  But  the  facts,  taken 
all  together,  do  strongly  support  the  racial  hy- 
pothesis. And  they  do  so  the  more  strongly,  if  we 
take  into  consideration  the  following  facts.  Sui- 
cide is  a  form  of  violence,  of  homicide;  we  might, 
then,  on  superficial  consideration,  expect  to  find 
suicide  most  frequent  where  other  forms  of  vio- 
lence and  of  homicide  abound.  But  the  facts 
are  just  the  converse  of  this  expectation.  It  is 
in  Southern  Italy,  Corsica,  and  Sardinia,  where 
the  population  is  most  purely  Mediterranean,  that 
crimes  of  violence,  especially  homicide,  are  most 
frequent;  while  suicide  is  very  infrequent.  Fur- 
ther, suicide  is  three  to  four  times  as  frequent 
among  men  as  among  women  in  all  peoples.  It  is 
fourteen  times  as  frequent  among  the  whites  of 
New  York  State  as  among  the  colored  popula- 
tion, proportionately  to  their  numbers.  Can  this 
be  attributed  to  social  advantages  enjoyed  by 
women  all  over  the  world,  or  by  the  colored  peo- 
ple of  New  York?  No;  it  is  constitutional.  The 
racial  hypothesis  is  immensely  strengthened,  when 
we  see  that  these  peculiar  features  of  the  distri- 
bution of  suicide  and  homicide  are  in  perfect  har- 
mony with  the  conclusions  we  have  drawn  from 


98  DIVORCE  IN  EUROPE 

the  comparison  of  the  arts  of  Northern  and  South- 
ern Europe;  they  are  just  what  we  should  expect, 
if  the  three  European  races  differ  in  mental  con- 
stitution in  the  ways  assumed  by  our  hypothesis. 

But,  before  dwelling  on  this,  let  us  glance  at  yet 
another  moral  pecuHarity  which  still  further 
strengthens  the  argument,  namely  the  frequency 
of  divorce.  Maps  of  the  frequency  of  divorce  or 
separation  in  Europe  show  a  close  correlation  of 
high  frequency  of  divorce  with  the  physical  quali- 
ties of  the  Nordic  race.  The  relation  is  disturbed 
by  religious  influences.  But  take  France.  We 
see  that  high  frequency  of  divorce  and  separation 
occurs  in  the  same  areas  in  which  suicide  and  the 
physical  qualities  of  the  Nordic  race  abound. 

Well,  the  introvert  and  unsociable  race  is  the 
one  prone  to  suicide  and  divorce.  The  sociable 
and  extrovert  race  is  prone  to  homicide,  but  not  to 
divorce  or  suicide.  Is  not  this  in  accordance  with 
the  mental  pecuHarities  which  on  other  grounds 
we  have  assigned  to  the  two  races?  We  know 
that  the  introvert  tends  to  brood  over  his  difficul- 
ties; he  readily  becomes  a  prey  to  internal  conflict 
of  the  emotions;  and,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  such 
conflict  does  not  only  give  rise  to  nervous  disorder 
of  the  neurasthenic  type,  but,  in  not  a  few  of 
these  cases,  leads  on  to  suicide.    As  regards  di- 


( ir 


MEDITERRANEAN  HOMICIDE 


99 


FREQUENCV^ 
DIVORCE 

(SEPARATIONS) 

FRANCE: 

1660-79 
Afltr  J-&ERTU.l-ON'83 


LJNO 


M 


.^V^  "^^^i 


s2=s:t- 


PER1000 
MARRIAGES 


)     .<^^- 


t«  *   •   •' 


MARSSU 


vorce,  we  may  suppose  that  the  injured  Nordic, 
the  unsociable  introvert,  broods  over  his  wrongs, 
and  then,  nursing  his  resentment,  either  seeks 
redress  in  the  law  courts,  or  deserts  his  partner 
and  becomes  liable  to  be  divorced  for  desertion. 
In  the  impulsive  sociable  extrovert,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  emotion  of  anger  blazes  out,  passes  at 
once  to  action  and  often  to  homicide;  and,  when 
he  is  injured  by  the  unfaithfulness  of  his  partner, 
he  does  not  brood  upon  the  problem — he  solves  it 


loo  NORDIC   SUICIDE 

at  once  by  using  knife  or  pistol  upon  one  or  both 
of  the  guilty  parties. 

Perhaps  it  is  not  fantastic  to  suppose  that  our 
third  point  of  difference  also  tends  in  the  same 
direction.  The  curious  Nordic,  we  may  suppose, 
brooding  and  pondering  in  secret  distress  the 
problem  of  his  partner's  infidehty,  strives  to  un- 
derstand how  such  an  act  has  become  possible: 
while  for  the  impetuous  incurious  Mediterranean 
the  fact  alone  suffices;  his  hand  is  not  arrested  by 
any  desire  to  understand  the  conditions  which 
have  produced  it. 

And  even  in  suicide  curiosity  may  play  its  part. 
Is  not  death  a  great  adventure  into  the  unknown  ? 
May  not  the  desire  to  know  the  last  secret  have 
urged  some  reflective  and  unhappy  souls,  exas- 
perated by  the  mystery  of  human  life,  to  pene- 
trate by  their  own  act  the  impenetrable  veil? 

I  will  pass  very  quickly  over  another  allied 
topic,  the  distribution  of  the  forms  of  religion. 
The  distribution  of  all  the  great  religions  of  the 
world  presents  interesting  and  suggestive  ques- 
tions of  race,  especially  perhaps  Buddhism,  which, 
after  rising  and  spreading  rapidly  in  India,  passed 
equally  rapidly  away  eastward,  to  become  endur- 
ingly  established  among  all  branches  of  the  yellow 
race.    But   I  will  keep  nearer  home  and  insist 


RELIGION  AND   RACE  loi 

only  on  the  distribution  of  Protestantism  and  of 
Roman  and  Greek  Catholicism,  the  three  great 
religious  forms  of  Europe.  The  suggestion  that 
this  is  largely  a  matter  of  race  is  not  new.  It  has 
often  been  made  and  often  denied.  In  the  main 
the  two  forms  of  Catholicism  are  religions  of 
authority,  of  convention,  of  ritual;  they  are  pre- 
eminently social  in  their  rites  and  celebrations. 
Only  the  Protestant  reads  his  Bible  in  his  closet 
and  communes  alone  with  God,  pondering  the 
problems  of  hfe  and  death.  Only  the  Protestant 
Church  has  spHt  into  a  thousand  peculiar  sects, 
each  maintaining  its  peculiar  creed  and  practice; 
and  only  Protestants  have  traversed  wide  oceans 
in  search  of  lands  where  they  might  worship  God 
after  their  own  fashion.  Or,  rather,  Protestantism 
is  the  only  one  of  the  three  forms  which  permits 
and  even  encourages  such  individualism  and  in- 
dependence. 

Now,  of  course,  the  vast  majority  of  men  grow 
up  in  and  adhere  to  the  church  of  their  fathers. 
But  the  Protestants  did,  as  a  matter  of  historical 
fact,  break  away  from  the  Church  of  Rome;  and 
those  who  have  broken  away  are  in  the  main  just 
those  peoples  and  those  sections  of  nations  in 
which  the  physical  qualities  of  the  Nordic  race 
predominate;  while  aU  those  in  which  the  other 


I02  THE  PROTESTANTS 

two  races  clearly  predominate  have  remained  sub- 
ject to  the  Catholic  Church  of  East  or  West. 
Among  the  former  are  the  populations  of  North- 
ern France,  Holland,  Denmark,  Scandinavia,  Fin- 
land, England,  of  most  of  Scotland,  and  of  North- 
ern Germany.  Ireland,  the  western  Highlands, 
Southern  France  and  Germany,  and  all  to  the 
south  and  east  of  them  remain  subject  to  the 
religions  of  authority.  There  are  exceptions  to 
the  rule,  e.  g.,  Wales,  Cornwall,  parts  of  Belgium 
and  of  Switzerland;  and  it  is  true  that  Calvin  and 
other  great  reformers  belonged  to  Switzerland. 
But  other  influences  have  played  a  part. 

Is  it,  then,  mere  coincidence  that  the  peoples  in 
which  predominates  the  blood  of  the  curious,  in- 
quiring, unsociable,  reflective,  introverted  Nordic 
race,  and  these  only,  with  few  small  exceptions, 
have  broken  away  from  the  religions  of  authority, 
of  convention,  of  formal  ritual,  of  outward  action 
and  emotional  display  ?  The  historian  may  point 
to  the  personal  and  political  circumstances  of  the 
reign  of  Henry  VIII  of  England,  or  suggest  a 
score  of  alternative  explanations  from  the  depths 
of  his  learning.  But  he  seems  to  me  to  ask  too 
much  of  our  credulity,  if  he  would  ascribe  the 
whole  correlation  to  a  multitude  of  historical 
accidents. 

In  this  connection  I  would  insist  upon  the  im- 


NATIONAL  CULTURE  103 

portance  of  a  principle  which  I  have  enunciated 
in  my  "Group  Mind."  ^  It  is  this.  The  innate 
mental  qualities  of  any  stably  organized  people  or 
nation  are  revealed  more  clearly  in  the  national 
character  and  in  the  national  institutions  than  in 
the  characters  of  individuals.  For  the  character 
of  each  individual  is  very  greatly  moulded  by  the 
national  institutions  and  traditions  among  which 
he  grows  up;  to  such  an  extent,  in  fact,  that  his 
native  disposition  may  seem  to  be  swamped,  over- 
laid, and  totally  obscured  by  the  tendencies  ac- 
quired through  training,  imitation,  and  social 
pressure  of  all  sorts.  But  the  culture  of  each  of 
the  modern  nations  has  been  slowly  built  up, 
partly  by  original  invention,  but  more  largely  by 
absorption  of  elements  imitated  from  other  na- 
tions. Of  the  family  of  nations,  each  contributes 
something  to  a  common  stock  of  culture  derived 
by  tradition  from  the  past;  from  this  common 
stock  each  nation  selects  what  best  suits  its  peo- 
ple; and,  having  adopted  such  an  element,  modi- 
fies it  to  suit  its  own  nature  more  exactly.  Thus 
the  culture,  the  sum  of  the  traditions  and  institu- 
tions, of  each  nation,  grows  in  an  environment 
which  exerts  constantly  a  selective  and  moulding 
influence  upon  it;  just  as,  according  to  the  Dar- 
winian theory,  the  various  species  of  animals  have 

1  New  York,  1920. 


I04     ADAPTATION  OF  CULTURE-SPECIES 

become  slowly  differentiated  and  evolved  by  the 
selective  and  moulding  action  of  their  environ- 
ments. In  the  case  of  the  national  culture-species, 
the  environment  which  thus  selects  and  moulds 
the  enduring  elements  is  the  sum  of  the  native 
qualities  of  the  people.  I  would  call  this  the 
law  of  the  adaptation  of  the  culture-species.  We 
may  see  illustrations  of  it  on  every  hand.  From 
the  operation  of  this  law  it  results  that  each  na- 
tion which  has  enjoyed  a  long  period  of  develop- 
ment, without  serious  interruption,  has  acquired 
traditions  and  institutions  that  are  in  harmony 
with  its  predominant  native  qualities.  Therefore, 
in  the  development  of  each  member  of  such  a 
nation,  nature  and  nurture  work  harmoniously 
together.  Just  for  this  reason  it  is  so  difficult  to 
distinguish,  in  any  one  member  of  such  a  nation, 
the  influence  of  his  native  disposition  from  that 
of  the  culture  by  which  his  development  has 
been  moulded. 

This  law  is  of  little  significance  in  relation  to 
such  peculiarities  as  the  frequency  of  suicide  and 
divorce.  But  it  is  of  great  importance  in  relation 
to  all  things  regulated  by  legislation  and  by  estab- 
Hshed  custom  and  tradition,  such  things  as  re- 
ligion and  social  organization,  the  form  of  the 
family,  the  village  community,  land-tenure,  po- 
litical and  educational  institutions. 


FRENCH  AND   BRITISH  105 

Bearing  this  law  in  mind,  let  us  examine  what 
appears  to  be  a  particularly  instructive  instance 
of  a  large  difference  in  the  destinies  of  two  peoples, 
determined  by  a  small  difference  of  anthropologic 
constitution. 

I  refer  to  the  French  and  the  British  nations. 
Both  stand  in  the  van  of  Western  civilization; 
both  have  produced  many  men  of  the  first  order 
in  many  spheres  of  activity.  Each  inhabits  a 
beautiful,  rich,  and  fertile  country,  of  temperate 
climate,  well  placed  geographically  in  every  re- 
gard, cultural,  climatic,  commercial,  military.  In 
all  these  respects  the  French  nation  has,  if  any- 
thing, the  advantage  of  the  British. 

Both  nations  have  been  great  conquerors  and 
colonists.  Yet  how  different  at  the  present  time 
are  their  positions  as  v/orld  influences !  The 
French  have  conquered  and  ruled  immense  areas 
of  the  surface  of  the  earth.  Yet  nowhere  outside 
France  is  there  any  large  community  of  people 
of  French  descent  and  speech  living  under  the 
French  flag;  nowhere  save  in  Canada  any  con- 
siderable population  of  French  descent.*  And 
France's  tenure  of  those  great  colonial  territories 

^  It  is  said  that  approximately  1,000,000  of  the  popula- 
tion of  the  French  possessions  in  North  Africa  are  of 
French  descent.  This  is  to  be  set  over  against  the  mil- 
lions of  Australasia,  Canada,  and  South  Africa. 


io6         THEIR  WORLD  INFLUENCE 

over  which  she  now  rules  seems  to  be  compara- 
tively precarious  and  uncertain.  Britain,  on  the 
other  hand,  not  only  administers  the  affairs  of 
one-fifth  of  the  people  of  the  world,  but  has 
peopled  North  America  and  Australia,  and  keeps 
under  her  flag  immense  territories  inhabited  by 
her  sons.  And,  while  the  French  language  and 
traditions  seem  to  have  small  prospect  of  a  fu- 
ture outside  France,  the  English  language  and 
British  traditions  seem  to  be  in  a  fair  way  to  pre- 
vail increasingly  throughout  the  world.  Further, 
in  nearly  all  her  great  colonial  adventures — ^in 
India,  in  Canada,  in  Louisiana,  in  the  West  In- 
dies, in  China,  in  Africa — France  has  come  into 
rivalry  with  the  British  and  has  been  worsted. 

Is  all  this  great  divergence  of  destiny  due  to 
a  converging  series  of  historical  accidents?  Or 
is  there  one  underlying  cause  or  condition  ?  May 
we  not  fairly  seek  the  ground  of  this  difference  of 
destiny  in  some  difference  of  anthropologic  con- 
stitution of  the  two  nations?  The  key  to  the 
problem  seems  to  me  to  have  been  given  in  a  pas- 
sage written  long  ago  by  a  French  traveller  in  this 
country,  Volney.  I  will  read  you  the  passage  in 
which  he  contrasts  the  French  with  the  British 
colonist.  ''The  French  colonist  deliberates  with 
his  wife  upon  everything  that  he  proposes  to  do; 


FRENCH  SOCIABILITY  107 

often  the  plans  fall  to  the  ground  through  lack 
of  agreement.  ...  To  visit  one's  neighbors,  to 
chat  with  them,  is  for  the  French  an  habitual 
need  so  imperious  that  on  all  the  frontier  of 
Louisiana  and  Canada  you  will  not  find  a  single 
French  colonist  established  beyond  sight  of  his 
neighbor's  home.  ...  On  the  other  hand,  the 
EngHsh  colonist,  slow  and  taciturn,  passes  the 
whole  day  continuously  at  work;  at  breakfast  he 
coldly  gives  his  orders  to  his  wife  .  .  .  and  goes 
forth  to  labor.  If  he  finds  an  opportunity  to  sell 
his  farm  at  a  profit,  he  does  so  and  goes  ten  or 
twenty  leagues  farther  into  the  wilderness  to  make 
hunself  a  new  home." 

There  you  have,  I  suggest,  the  key  to  the  differ- 
ence we  are  examining.  And  this  testimony  does 
not  stand  alone.  It  is  in  harmony  with  a  great 
number  of  social  differences  presented  by  the  two 
peoples;  the  centralized  form  of  government  m 
France  as  against  the  local  autonomies  of  Brit- 
ain; the  form  of  the  French  family  and  the  laws 
and  customs  regulating  family  life,  e.  g.,  the  laws 
of  inheritance;  the  educational  system  as  against 
the  English  lack  of  educational  system;  the  pre- 
dominance of  co-operative  centrally  organized 
activities  among  the  French;  the  individual  enter- 
prise and  lack  of  systematic  organization  of  the 


io8         HISTORICAL  EXPLANATIONS 

British.^  All  these  and  other  similar  differences 
have  been  pointed  out  and  dwelt  upon  by  many 
French  writers  ;2  and  various  attempts  have  been 
made  to  explain  them  as  the  result  of  historical 
events,  such  as  the  more  thorough  Romanization 
of  Gaul,  the  conquest  of  England  by  William  of 
Normandy,  the  different  operation  of  the  feudal 
system  in  the  two  countries.  The  English  his- 
torian, T.  H.  Buckle,  was  one  of  those  who  dwelt 
upon  these  differences  and  who  claimed  to  ex- 
plain them  from  such  historical  episodes.  He 
summed  up  the  difference  in  two  convenient 
phrases,  the  predominance  of  the  spirit  of  pro- 
tection in  France,  and  the  predominance  of  the 
spirit  of  independence  in  Britain.  I  will  not  de- 
lay to  examine  these  proposed  explanations  and 
to  show  you  their  inadequacy.  I  have  done  so 
elsewhere.^    I  will  only  remark  that  so  general 

1  The  difference  is  strikingly  illustrated  by  the  Roman- 
ized and  codified  law  of  France  and  the  chaotic  common 
law  of  England,  which  is  dominated  by  judge-made 
precedents.  I  understand  from  Dean  Roscoe  Pound  that 
the  law  of  England  only  narrowly  escaped  Romanization 
at  one  period,  thanks  to  the  independent  spirit  of  some 
Enghsh  lawyers. 

2  See  especially  Ed.  Demolin's  '^A  quoi  tient  la  supe- 
riorite  des  Anglo-Saxons?" 

3  "The  Group  Mind." 


RACIAL   COMPONENTS  109 

a  phenomenon  requires  for  its  explanation  a  gen- 
eral deep-lying  cause,  such  as  is  only  to  be  found 
in  some  difference  of  native  qualities  between  the 
two  peoples. 

Let  us  compare  the  two  peoples  in  respect  of 
racial  composition  as  revealed  by  history  and  by 
physical  anthropology.  The  French  people  seems 
to  have  been  formed  by  a  mixture  and  partial 
blending  of  the  three  great  European  races  in 
approximately  equal  proportions.  The  British 
people  seems  to  have  been  formed  chiefly  by  a 
mixture  and  partial  blending  of  the  Nordic  and 
the  Mediterranean  races;  the  Alpine,  which  prob- 
ably predominates  in  France  numerically,  being 
hardly  represented,  and  the  Nordic  predominat- 
ing over  the  other  elements.  Probably  most 
anthropologists  would  assign  Nordic  blood  to 
Britain  to  the  extent  of  60  or  70  per  cent,  the 
rest  being  largely  Mediterranean;  and  to  France 
some  25  per  cent  Nordic  blood,  with  perhaps  40 
per  cent  Alpine  and  35  per  cent  Mediterranean. 
This  is  a  very  rough  estimate,  of  course. 

We  may  ask:  Given  the  moral  peculiarities  of 
the  Nordic  race  which  we  have  inferred  on  other 
grounds,  does  this  considerably  greater  propor- 
tion of  the  blood  and  the  qualities  of  that  race 
suffice  to  account  for  the  contrast  between  the 


no  BRITISH  WANDERERS 

two  nations  expressed  by  Buckle's  phrase — the 
predominance  of  the  spirit  of  protection  in  France 
and  of  the  spirit  of  independence  in  Britain?  It 
does,  I  think,  go  some  way  to  explain  it;  especially 
if  we  note  that  sociability  or  gregariousness,  which 
we  saw  to  be  strong  in  the  Mediterranean  race,  is 
at  least  as  strong,  perhaps  stronger,  in  the  Alpines. 
We  have  seen  from  Volney's  description  how  the 
sociability  of  the  Frenchman  handicaps  him,  as 
compared  with  the  Briton,  when  he  becomes  a 
pioneer  and  colonist  in  new  lands. 

We  may  suppose  also  that  the  greater  curiosity 
of  the  Nordic  race  contributes  to  give  the  Briton 
that  restless  wandering  habit  which  has  spread 
him  over  all  the  surface  of  the  earth;  so  that,  no 
matter  to  what  remote  region  you  may  pene- 
trate, you  are  apt  to  see  some  solitary  Briton  walk 
in  on  you  and  casually  demand  the  loan  of  a  copy 
of  the  London  Times, 


V 

Having  found  reasons  for  assigning  certain 
quaUties  to  the  three  great  races  of  Europe,  we 
are  attempting  to  apply  this  hypothesis  to  the 
explanation  of  that  striking  difference  between 
the  French  and  British  nations  which  is  summed 
up  in  the  phrase— the  prevalence  in  France  of  the 
spirit  of  protection,  in  Britain  of  the  spirit  of 
independence. 

I  said  that  the  greater  sociabihty  of  the  French, 
which  I  attributed  to  the  greater  strength  of  the 
gregarious  impulse  in  the  Mediterranean  and  Al- 
pine races,  goes  some  way  to  explain  this  differ- 
ence; and  that  the  stronger  curiosity  of  the  Nordic 
race  would  also  contribute  to  this  difference.  ^ 

But  the  differences  between  the  institutions 
and  customs  of  the  two  peoples  at  home  and 
abroad  seem  to  require  the  assumption  of  a  further 
difference  of  innate  quahty.  The  Briton^s  intol- 
erance of  authority,  his  dislike  of  being  controlled, 
governed,  administered,  and  his  preference  for  in- 
dividual initiative,  show  themselves  in  all  his  con- 
duct of  affairs;  they  are  well  expressed  in  the  ac- 
cepted dictum  that  the  British,  when  engaged  in 


112  FRENCH  LEADERSHIP 

any  large  enterprise,  "muddle  through"  somehow. 
They  have  always  had  to  "muddle  through,"  be- 
cause they  will  not  submit  to  being  deliberately 
organized  and  led,  according  to  any  logically 
thought-out  scheme.  The  first  partial  exception 
in  their  history  was  the  acceptance  of  compulsory 
military  service  under  the  extreme  pressure  of  the 
Great  War. 

The  French,  on  the  other  hand,  have  always 
been  ready  to  accept  organization  and  leadership, 
to  look  for  it  to  the  State  or  to  some  man  of  dom- 
inating personality — a  Napoleon,  a  Gambetta,  a 
Boulanger,  or  a  Richelieu. 

We  may  note  in  passing  that  this  tendency  to 
seek  personal  leadership  seems  to  be  still  stronger 
in  the  Germans,  among  whom  the  Alpine  blood 
is  even  more  strongly  represented  than  in  the 
French.  Their  docility  under  an  autocratic  and 
arbitrary  bureaucracy;  their  suggestibility  in  all 
matters  of  belief;  their  devotion  to  the  Kaiser 
(which  even  now  threatens  to  restore  him  to  the 
throne) ;  the  flourishing  of  a  host  of  little  princes 
and  grand  dukes;  the  spirit  of  caste,  which  leads 
each  man  to  seek  a  definite  position  in  the  official 
hierarchy  and  from  it  to  look  up  humbly  to  all 
above  him  in  the  scale — all  these  are  significant  of 
a  society  in  which  a  docile  race  is  dominated  by 


GERMAN   DOCILITY  113 

one  of  a  more  self-assertive  quality.^  This  actu- 
ally and  historically  is,  I  suggest,  the  condition  of 
affairs  in  Germany  and  the  key  to  its  history;  and 
to  a  less  degree  it  is  true  of  France  also. 

The  history  of  the  purest  stocks  of  the  Nordic 
race  illustrates  abundantly  and  overwhelmingly 
their  defect  of  docility,  their  possession  in  the 
highest  degree  of  the  opposite  quality  of  self- 

^  The  organization  of  Germany  for  her  bid  for  world 
domination  seems  to  have  been  in  the  main  the  work  of 
the  Prussian  aristocracy,  the  Junkers,  a  class  in  which  the 
Nordic  blood  preponderates.  The  tendency  of  the  masses 
of  the  German  people  to  proclaim  '^Deutschland  iiber 
Alles"  is  a  recent  phenomenon,  induced  and  sedulously 
cultivated  in  their  docile  minds  by  the  ofiQcial  hierarchy. 
Bismarck  said:  "The  preponderance  of  dynastic  attach- 
ment, and  the  use  of  a  dynasty  as  the  indispensable  cement 
to  hold  together  a  definite  portion  of  the  nation  calling 
itself  by  the  name  of  the  dynasty  is  a  specific  peculiarity 
of  the  German  Empire"  ("Bismarck,  the  Man  and  the 
Statesman,"  vol.  I,  p.  322.    Butter). 

The  late  German  Emperor  is  reported  to  have  pro- 
claimed: "There  is  only  one  master  of  the  nation.  And 
that  is  I,  and  I  will  not  abide  any  other."  ...  "I  need 
Christian  soldiers,  soldiers  who  say  their  Pater  Noster. 
The  soldier  should  not  have  a  will  of  his  own,  but  you 
should  all  have  but  one  will  and  that  is  my  will;  there  is 
but  one  law  for  you  and  that  is  mine."  The  English  na- 
tion quickly  resented  the  claim  to  the  divine  right  of  kings 
and  settled  the  question  promptly  and  finally,  very  soon 
after  the  "right"  was  proclaimed  to  it. 


114  NORMAN  ENTERPRISE 

assertion,  exhibiting  itself  as  initiative,  enterprise, 
impatience  of  control.  The  Normans,  a  pure 
Nordic  stock,  exhibited  this  quality  in  a  truly 
marvellous  degree  in  their  great  age,  when  they 
conquered  northern  France,  all  England,  Sicily, 
and  much  of  Italy  and  of  the  Mediterranean 
coasts.  For  these  astonishing  feats  were  accom- 
plished, not  by  the  power  of  great  highly  organ- 
ized states  and  immense  armies  of  conscripts, 
slaves,  or  mercenaries,  but  by  small  bands  of  vol- 
unteers associated  together  for  each  particular 
enterprise  under  some  chosen  leader. 

The  anthropologists  of  the  school  of  Le  Play 
have  offered  a  most  interesting  theory  of  the 
origin  in  prehistoric  times  of  this  very  marked 
difference  between  the  Nordic  and  the  Alpine 
race.  I  have  no  time  to  put  it  before  you.^  But, 
whatever  its  origin,  it  must,  I  think,  be  accepted 
as  one  of  the  clearest  and  most  important  differ- 
ences of  racial  quality.  Are  there,  then,  any  rec- 
ognized factors  in  human  nature  which  may  be 
the  innate  basis  of  this  difference? 

Yes.  I  have  shown^  that  docility  and  self- 
assertion  are  rooted  in  two  distinct  and  opposed 

1 1  have  given  a  condensed  account  of  this  theory  in  my 
"  Group  Mind." 
2 In  my  ''Introduction  to  Social  Psychology." 


NORDIC  SELF-ASSERTION  115 

instinctive  tendencies,  which  I  have  proposed  to 
call  the  instincts  of  submission  and  of  self-assertion 
respectively.  I  have  shown  reason  to  believe  that 
the  former  is  the  root  of  all  docility  and  sugges- 
tibility, that  it  is  the  principal  factor  in  all  those 
social  phenomena  which  some  authors  have  erro- 
neously ascribed  to  the  herd  instinct.^  And  I 
have  shown  that  the  other,  the  instinct  of  self- 
assertion,  is  the  most  essential,  the  all-important 
factor,  in  what  we  call  character,  that  complex 
organization  from  which  spring  all  manifestations 
of  will-power,  all  volition,  resolution,  hard  choice, 
initiative,  enterprise,  determination. 

If,  then,  we  add  to  the  qualities  already  assigned 
to  the  Nordic  race  an  exceptional  degree  of 
strength  of  this  instinct  of  self-assertion,  and 
attribute  to  the  Alpine  race  a  stronger  instinct 
of  submission,  we  complete  our  hypothetical  de- 
scription of  their  racial  qualities  in  a  way  which 
solves  our  present  problem.  It  is  this  greater 
dose  of  self-assertiveness  in  the  Briton  which  leads 
other  peoples  to  complain  that  he  goes  about  the 
world  as  though  it  belonged  to  him;  it  is  this 
which,  in  spite  of  his  lack  of  method  and  organiza- 


^  E.  g.,  W.  Trotter,  in  "Instincts  of  the  Herd  in  Peace 
and  War." 


ii6  BRITISH  MUDDLE 

tion,  has  enabled  him  to  "muddle  through'^  the 
Napoleonic  Wars,  the  Crimean  War,  the  Indian 
Mutiny,  the  South  African  War,  and,  lastly,  the 
Great  War.  It  is  this  which,  in  spite  of  his  lack 
of  subtlety  and  sympathy  and  intellectuality,  has 
enabled  him  to  subdue  and  govern  the  300,000,000 
of  India.  And  it  is  this,  in  combination  with  his 
other  qualities,  that  has  rendered  him  the  suc- 
cessful colonist  par  excellence. 

Let  us  note  in  passing  that  the  addition  of  this 
quality  to  the  picture  of  the  Nordic  race  com- 
pletes, or  makes  more  adequate,  our  explanation 
of  the  distribution  of  the  Protestant  religion  in 
the  world;  for  it  shows  us  that  the  men  of  this 
race  are  by  nature  Protestants,  essentially  pro- 
testers and  resisters  against  every  form  of  domi- 
nation and  organization,  whether  by  despot, 
church,  or  state. 

Now  consider  for  a  moment  the  question  of  dif- 
ferences of  innate  moral  qualities  between  more 
widely  unlike  races.  We  have  found  evidence  of 
such  moral  differences  where  there  is  no  evidence 
of  differences  of  intellectual  level,  and  between 
races  closely  allied  and  of  similar  civilizations. 
Is  it  not  probable  that,  between  races  which 
show  marked  differences  of  intellectual  capacity 
and  which,  in  physical  qualities  and  in  level  and 


RED  MEN  AND  BLACK  117 

type  of  culture,  are  widely  different,  there  may  be 
still  larger  differences  of  innate  moral  qualities? 
I  think  it  is  highly  probable.  But  I  do  not  feel 
competent  to  say  much  on  this  head.  One  would 
need  an  intimate  acquaintance  with  extra-Euro- 
pean civilizations,  such  as  I  cannot  claim. 

I  would  point  out  that,  in  respect  of  the  peo- 
ples which  have  evolved  no  distinctive  culture 
of  their  own,  any  reply  to  this  question  is  pecu- 
liarly difficult,  just  because  they  lack  the  devel- 
oped traditions  and  institutions  which,  as  I  have 
argued,  give  the  best  and  clearest  expression  to 
the  native  qualities  of  any  developed  nation.  But 
consider  a  single  striking  instance  of  such  differ- 
ence of  moral  quality — the  diff'erence  between  the 
Red  man  and  the  Black.  Consider  the  difference 
of  their  relations  to  the  Whites,  throughout  the 
history  of  this  country.  The  Negro  has  in  a  way 
adapted  himself  to  the  position  imposed  upon 
him.  He  has  multiplied,  in  spite  of  the  ravages 
of  disease,^  both  in  slavery  and  freedom.  But  the 
Red  man  has  never  let  himself  be  impressed  into 
the  social  system  of  the  dominant  Whites;  in  some 
peculiar  way  he  has  proved  resistant;  he  dies 

1  It  is  well  known  that  alcohol,  tuberculosis,  and  syphilis 
have  taken  a  heavy  toll  of  both  Red  and  Black. 


ii8  NEGRO  DOCILITY 

rather  than  submit.  Does  not  this  imply  some 
deep-seated  moral  difference  between  the  two 
races?  If  the  Red  man  had  the  adaptabiHty  of 
the  Negro,  would  he  not  have  become  a  very 
important  factor  in  the  history  of  these  United 
States  of  America?  The  same  difference  has  ap- 
peared clearly  throughout  the  West  Indies,  where 
the  more  adaptable  black  race  has  superseded  the 
red  men,  even  more  completely  than  in  this  coun- 
try. I  am  not  sufficiently  acquainted  with  the 
two  races  to  attempt  to  define  the  racial  qualities 
which  have  determined  this  difference.  I  will 
suggest  merely,  on  the  basis  of  a  slight  knowledge: 
(i)  that  the  Negro  race  is  pronouncedly  extrovert, 
and  that  the  red  men  are  equally  extreme  intro- 
verts; (2)  that  the  black  race  is  more  strongly 
gregarious  and  sociable;  (3)  further,  that  the  red 
race  is  strongly  self-assertive,  while  in  the  Negro 
the  submissive  impulse  is  strong.  The  last  point 
may  be  illustrated  by  a  true  story  of  a  Negro 
maid,  whose  Northern  mistress,  after  treating 
her  with  great  forbearance  for  a  time,  in  spite  of 
shortcomings,  turned  upon  her  and  scolded  her 
vigorously.  The  maid  showed  no  resentment, 
but  rather  showed  signs  of  a  new  satisfaction, 
and  exclaimed:  **Lor',  Missus,  you  do  make  me 
feel  so  good."    Is  not  this  a  typical  and  signifi- 


NEGRO  AS  FOLLOWER  119 

cant  incident?  I  will  even  venture  to  suggest 
that,  in  the  great  strength  of  this  instinct  of  sub- 
mission, we  have  the  main  key  to  the  history  of 
the  Negro  race.  In  its  own  country  it  has  always 
been  ruled  by  absolute  despots,  who  have  obtained 
the  most  abject  submission  from  their  subjects, 
even  when  they  have  ruled  with  the  utmost 
cruelty.  These  despots  have  often  been  men  of 
foreign  blood,  Arabs  largely.  When  Negroes  have 
been  well  handled,  with  firmness  but  with  kind- 
ness and  consideration,  as  by  the  French  officers 
who  have  trained  the  black  regiments  of  France, 
they  have  proved  themselves  to  be  capable  of 
extreme  courage,  devotion,  and  loyalty;  to  be, 
in  short,  ideal  followers.^ 


1 CJ.  "Le  Courage,"  by  Voivenel  and  Huot,  Paris,  1918. 
Shaler  {op.  cit.)  insists  upon  the  imitativeness  and  the 
eminent  faithfulness  of  the  Negroes  to  their  white  masters, 
and  upon  their  sympathetic  responsiveness;  they  "have 
the  whole  range  of  primitive  sympathies  exceedingly  well- 
developed.  They  have  a  singularly  quick,  sympathetic 
contact  with  the  neighbor;  they  attain  to  his  state  of  mind 
and  shape  themselves  to  meet  him  as  no  other  primitive 
people  do.  Those  who  have  had  a  chance  to  compare  in 
this  regard  the  Negro  and  the  American  Indian  must  have 
been  struck  by  the  difference  between  the  two  peoples  in 
this  most  important  feature."  Intimate  contact  with 
Oceanic  Negroes  (in  the  Torres  Straits)  and  with  Malays 
during  many  months  impressed  me  strongly  with  the 


I20     PROVIDENCE  AND  IMPROVIDENCE 

The  extreme  facility  with  which  the  pure 
Negroes  adopt  the  most  extravagant  superstitions, 
and  the  great  influence  of  these  upon  their  con- 
duct— these  facts  point  to  and  support  the  same 
assumption,  namely  an  exceptional  strength  of 
the  submissive  instinct,  the  root  of  all  docihty  and 
suggestibiHty. 

There  is  a  moral  difference  which  distinguishes 
most  of  the  peoples  of  primitive  culture  from 
those  which  have  developed  or  acquired  civiKza- 
tion;  this,  though  it  is  difficult  to  explain,  seems 
to  be  of  the  first  importance.  It  may  be  defined 
as  the  difference  between  providence  and  improvi- 
dence.   Improvidence  is  marked  in  the  Malay 

magnitude  of  this  same  difference  between  these  outMng 
branches  of  these  two  races.  Shaler  points  also  to  another 
striking  difference  between  the  black  man  and  the  red. 
He  asserts  that  the  Negro  is  much  more  capable  of  sus- 
tained labor,  and  he  connects  this  with  the  fact  that  the 
Negroes  have  long  practised  a  rude  agriculture,  while  the 
ancestors  of  the  red  men  were  hunters  and  nomads.  It 
seems  to  me  doubtful  whether  this  difference  is  rooted  in 
innate  or  racial  quaUties.  Any  disposition  to  sustained 
labor  is  certainly  conspicuous  by  its  absence  in  the  Oceanic 
Negroes  with  whom  I  am  acquainted.  It  is  difficult  to 
conceive  of  such  a  disposition  as  an  hereditary  quality; 
this  difference  between  Black  and  Red  in  America  may  well 
I  be  due  to  the  different  conditions  of  Ufe  of  the  two  races 
^^  in  the  present  and  in  the  recent  past. 


PROVIDENCE  AND  INTELLIGENCE     121 

and  the  Negro,  the  two  tropical  races  par  excel- 
lence; in  less  degree,  perhaps,  in  the  peoples  of 
India  (it  is  said  that  the  Hindu  family  habitually 
squanders  extravagant  sums  on  such  ceremonials 
as  weddings  and  funerals) ;  and  in  the  Polynesian, 
Indonesian,  and  Melanesian;  in  fact,  in  all  the 
races  which  have  long  inhabited  the  tropic  regions, 
where  man  can  survive  without  taking  much 
thought  for  the  morrow. 

The  opposite  quality,  providence,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  shown  in  a  high  degree  by  all  the  peoples 
that  have  developed  a  high  civiHzation.  If  we 
look  more  closely  at  these  qualities,  we  see  that 
improvidence  is  a  negative  quality;  it  is  due  to 
the  absence  of  something  which  makes  a  man 
provident.  Is  this  merely  a  matter  of  intelligence 
and  imagination?  I  think  not.  The  imagina- 
tion of  the  Negro  race  seems  to  be  vivid  and 
powerful.  It  may  be  true  that  many  of  the  im- 
provident races  are  of  rather  low  intellectual 
capacity.  But  a  man  may  be  extremely  provi- 
dent, in  fact  a  real  miser,  in  spite  of  a  low  degree 
of  intelligence. 

If  a  man  is  to  be  provident,  he  must  be  so 
constituted  as  to  find  some  satisfaction  in  posses- 
sion; that  is  to  say,  there  must  be  in  him  an  im- 
pulse to  save  or  hoard  which  finds  satisfaction  in 


122        PROVIDENCE  AND  INSTINCT 

the  act  of  hoarding,  an  impulse  which  prompts 
him  to  postpone  enjoyment  of  the  pleasure  of 
immediate  use  to  the  satisfaction  of  possession. 
Such  an  impulse  is  shown  by  many  animals,  and 
I  have  claimed  it  as  a  true  instinctive  tendency  of 
human  nature.^ 

The  strength  or  weakness  of  this  tendency  is,  I 
suggest,  the  main  factor  in  determining  that  a 
man  or  a  race  shall  be  provident  or  improvident. 
And  it  is  very  easy  to  see  how  natural  selection 
may  have  developed  this  quality  in  peoples  in- 
habiting cold  or  arid  regions.  It  seems,  in  fact, 
to  be  present  in  the  principal  races  in  proportion 
to  the  demand  for  it  made  by  their  habitat.  It 
seems  to  be  strong  in  the  Alpine  and  the  Nordic 
race  and  in  the  Chinese;  less  strong  in  most 
branches  of  the  Mediterranean;  but  strong  in  the 
Semites,  in  the  Jews  and  Arabs  and  the  Phoeni- 
cians, who  long  inhabited  the  dry  desert  regions. ^ 
Its  strength  seems  to  be  a  quality  essential  to  any 
people  that  is  to  build  up  a  civilization  based  on 

^  "Social  Psychology." 

2 1  may  add  that  while  writing  these  pages  I  have  re- 
ceived from  Australia  a  letter  informing  me  of  the  opinion 
of  the  greatest  living  authority  on  the  black  natives  of 
that  continent;  to  the  effect  that  the  race  is  extremely  de- 
ficient in,  or  wholly  innocent  of,  the  acquisitive  impulse. 


ACQUISITIVE  SOCIETIES  123 

the  accumulation  of  wealth,  on  commerce  and 
industry,  as  every  higher  civilization  has  been. 
Owing  to  this  necessity,  every  communistic  or 
socialistic  scheme  which  would  abolish  private 
property  is  an  empty  dream,  an  unrealizable  ideal, 
a  Utopia.  The  strength  of  this  impulse  seems  to 
vary  widely  even  in  nearly  related  peoples,  and 
also  from  one  family  to  another.  It  would  cer- 
tainly seem  to  be  stronger  in  the  lowland  Scotch 
than  in  the  Irish;  and  it  is,  I  think,  not  improb- 
able that  its  variations  are  a  principal  ground  of 
the  social  stratification  which  tends  to  arise  in  all 
acquisitive  societies,  that  is  to  say,  in  all  civilized 
peoples. 

We  have  found  reason  to  beheve  that,  though 
the  Nordic  race  has  no  monopoly  of  genius, 
though  it  does  not  excel,  and  perhaps  does  not 
equal,  other  races  in  many  forms  of  excellence  (as 
so  extravagantly  claimed  by  the  race-dogmatists), 
it  yet  has  certain  qualities  which  have  played  a 
great  part  in  determining  the  history,  the  insti- 
tutions, the  customs  and  traditions,  and  the  geo- 
graphical distribution  of  the  peoples  in  whom  its 
blood  is  strongly  represented. 

With  two  exceptions  (namely  differences  of  in- 
tellectual stature,  and  those  subtle  peculiarities  of 
nervous  constitution  which  determine  extroversion 


124  MUSICAL  TALENT 

and  introversion)  all  the  peculiarities  we  have 
assigned  hitherto  to  races  have  been  degrees  of 
strength  of  certain  instinctive  tendencies. 

We  must  ask — Are  there  other  innate  inherited 
quahties,  besides  these  instincts  which  in  their 
sum  and  balance  are  so  large  a  part  of  the  basis 
of  moral  development  or  character  ?  The  answer 
clearly  is — Yes.  We  know  that  individuals  dif- 
fer in  such  things  as  musical  and  mathematical 
talent;  and  we  know,  also,  that  these  talents  are 
hereditary,  and  that,  in  respect  of  musical  talent 
at  least,  there  are  marked  differences  between  peo- 
ples. For  example,  no  one  can  question  the  fact 
that  the  Welsh  people  is  (statistically)  more  musi- 
cally gifted  than  the  English. 

The  innate  basis  of  such  talents  is  a  very  ob- 
scure matter;  we  do  not  know  whether  such  a 
talent  is  an  hereditary  unit-quality  or  not.  Prob- 
ably it  is  complex.  But  we  really  are  in  almost 
total  ignorance.  I  mention  these  special  endow- 
ments, in  order  to  enforce  the  contention  that  the 
innate  basis  of  the  mind  may  be  far  richer  and 
more  complex  than  is  commonly  assumed  by  the 
psychologists. 

One  medical  psychologist  of  great  experience 
and  repute,  Doctor  C.  G.  Jung,  has  been  led  by 
many  years  devoted  to  deep  exploration  of  the 


THE  COLLECTIVE  UNCONSCIOUS     125 

minds  of  nervous  patients  to  believe  that  the  in- 
nate basis  of  the  mind  comprises  much  that  is 
specific  and  differentiated;  he  has  revived  the 
theory  of  innate  ideas.    He  beheves  that  each  of 
us  inherits  what  he  caUs  "the  coUective  uncon- 
scious," a  part  of  the  mind  which  manifests  itself 
most  clearly  in  dreams  and  in  states  of  mental 
disorder,   but   which   colors   and  biases   all   our 
thinking.    This  "collective  unconscious"  reveals 
itself  chiefly  in  certain  "archetypes,"  ideas  which 
have  a  wide  symbohcal  function,  images  which 
stand  for  or  symbolize  certain  universally  recur- 
ring relations  and  problems  of  human  life.    He 
holds  that,  though  certain  older  and  most  funda- 
mental of  these  "  archetypes "  are  common  to  the 
whole  human  race,  each  race  and  each  people  that 
has  lived  for  many  generations  under  or  by^  a 
particular  type  of  civiUzation  has  speciaUzed  its 
"coUective  unconscious,"  differentiated  and  de- 
veloped the  "archetypes"  into  forms  peculiar  to 

itself. 

He  clauns  that  in  many  cases  he  can  discover 
the  racial  origins,  the  blood,  of  his  patients  by 
studymg  the  forms  of  symbolism  and  the  allegori- 
cal figures  which  appear  in  their  dreams.  He 
claims  even  that  sometunes  a  single  rich  dream 
has  enabled  him  to  discover  the  fact,  say,  of  Jew- 


126  ARCHETYPAL  IDEAS 

ish  or  Mediterranean  blood  in  a  patient  who 
shows  none  of  the  outward  physical  marks  of  such 
descent.  And  he  finds  these  "archetypes"  ex- 
pressed in  the  mythology  and  folk-lore  of  each 
people,  as  well  as  in  their  dreams.^ 

Clearly,  if  these  views  of  Doctor  Jung  are  well 
founded,  they  are  of  the  first  importance  for  our 
topic;  they  would  carry  the  doctrine  of  racial 
peculiarities  of  mental  constitution  much  farther 
than  I  have  done  so  far.  I  wish  that  I  could  give 
you  a  confident  opinion  for  or  against  Jung's  doc- 
trine. The  interest  and  importance  of  these  views 
has  seemed  to  me  so  great  that  I  have  put  myself 
into  the  hands  of  Doctor  Jung  and  asked  him  to 
explore  the  depths  of  my  mind,  my  "collective  un- 
conscious''; that  is  to  say,  having  no  well-marked 
symptoms  of  insanity  or  neurosis,  I  have  assidu- 
ously studied  my  own  dreams  under  his  direction 
and  with  his  help.  And  the  result  is — I  "  evermore 
came  out  by  that  same  door  wherein  I  went."  I 
do  not  know.  I  cannot  find  grounds  for  a  decided 
opinion.  I  seem  to  find  in  myself  traces  or  indi- 
cations of  Doctor  Jung's  "archetypes,"  but  faint 
and  doubtful  traces.  Perhaps  it  is  that  I  am  too 
mongrel-bred  to  have  clear-cut  archetypes;  per- 
haps my  "collective  unconscious" — if  I  have  one 

^  CJ.  his  "Psychology  of  the  Unconscious." 


FREUDIANISM  AND  JEWS  127 

—is  mixed  and  confused  and  blurred.    One  of 
Jung's  arguments  weighs  with  me  a  good  deal 
in  favor  of  his  view.    He  points  out  that  the 
famous  theory  of  Freud,  which  he  himseH  at  one 
time  accepted,  is  a  theory  of  the  development  and 
working  of  the  mind  which  was  evolved  by  a  Jew 
who  has  studied  chiefly  Jewish  patients;  and  it 
seems  to  appeal  very  strongly  to  Jews;  many, 
perhaps  the  majority,  of  those  physicians  who 
accept  it  as  a  new  gospel,  a  new  revelation,  are 
Jews.    It  looks  as  though  this  theory,  which  to 
me  and  to  most  men  of  my  sort  seems  so  strange, 
bizarre,  and  fantastic,  may  be  approximately  true 
of  the  Jewish  race. 

Again,  one  cannot  ignore  the  fact  that  Jung 
has  a  number  of  ardent  disciples  who  hold  his 
theory  true,  because  they  find  it  helpful  in  the 
treatment  of  their  patients.  In  face  of  this  situa- 
tion, suspended  judgment  with  an  open  mind  is 
the  only  scientific  attitude. 

But,  though  in  my  opmion  the  evidence  adduced 
by  Jung  in  support  of  his  theory  of  archetypal 
ideas  is  not  such  as  should  secure  acceptance 
of  the  theory  by  aU  impartial  mquirers,  it  is  worth 
while  to  point  out  that  we  have  no  positive  knowl- 
edge which  is  incompatible  with  the  theory.  It 
is  true  that  the  theory  is  hardly  to  be  reconciled 


128  NEO-DARWINISM 

with  the  Neo-Danvinian  principle  which  is  so 
widely  accepted,  somewhat  dogmatically,  by 
many  biologists  at  the  present  time,  the  principle 
which  denies  the  possibiHty  of  the  transmission 
from  generation  to  generation  of  the  effects  of 
use,  the  gains  of  facility  and  function  made  by 
the  efforts  of  each  generation.  But,  as  I  shall 
presently  insist,  this  principle  is  by  no  means 
finally  estabhshed.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is 
a  certain  amount  of  vague  evidence,  beyond  that 
adduced  by  Jung,  which  makes  in  favor  of  some 
such  view  as  his.  First,  it  is  becoming  generally 
recognized  by  biologists  that  the  Darwinian  prin- 
ciple of  selection  is  not  in  itself  adequate  to  ac- 
count for  the  evolution  of  the  world  of  living 
things,  and  especially  that  it  is  inadequate  to 
account  for  the  evolution  of  the  mental  powers 
of  the  human  species.  Secondly,  popular  opinion, 
based  upon  a  vast  amount  of  vague  and  unana- 
lyzed  experience,  is  decidedly  opposed  to  scientific 
opinion  in  this  matter.  And  in  these  obscure 
regions  the  popular  tradition  is  often  more  nearly 
right  than  the  opinion  prevailing  in  the  scientific 
world  at  any  particular  phase  of  the  development 
of  science.  Scientific  opinion  is  too  apt  to  deny 
the  possibility  of  alleged  forms  of  happening,  on 
the  ground  that  we  cannot  understand  how  such 


THE  PSCHYOANALYSTS  129 

things  can  happen.  It  cannot  be  too  strongly 
insisted  that  denial  on  such  ground  is  always  un- 
justified, and  that  it  is  especially  unjustifiable  in 
the  obscure  realm  of  the  human  mind,  about  which 
our  positive  knowledge  is  still  so  scanty  and  rudi- 
mentary. Popular  opinion  in  this  matter  would 
seem  to  be  influenced  chiefly  by  similarities  in 
mental  traits  (both  moral  traits  and  peculiar  in- 
tellectual capacities  and  tendencies,  such  as  forms 
of  wit,  aptitudes  for  language  study,  for  mechani- 
cal contrivance,  for  imaginative  flights)  which 
may  often  be  observed  in  members  of  a  family. 
Such  similarities  may  be  plausibly  attributed  to 
personal  contact  and  imitation  in  many  cases. 
But  in  other  cases  this  explanation  will  not  apply; 
yet  the  similarities  may  be  very  striking.  Thirdly, 
the  larger  school  of  psychoanalysts,  who  follow 
Freud  rather  than  Jung,  find  evidence  of  certain 
constantly  recurring  symbols  in  dreams  and  fan- 
tasies which,  if  the  evidence  is  sufficiently  good, 
necessitate  the  assumption  of  innate  factors  in  the 
mind  very  similar  to  Jung's  archetypal  ideas. ^ 

1 1  refer  more  especially  to  such  symbolic  images  as  the 
snake.  In  other  ways,  Professor  Freud's  own  theory  of 
the  neuroses  implies  clearly  the  principle  of  inheritance 
of  racial  experience,  and  Professor  Freud,  in  his  later 
writings,  has  fully  recognized  this  implication.     In  his 


I30      INNATE  MORAL  SENTIMENTS? 

Fourthly,  the  perennial  interest  of  children  in  cer- 
tain kinds  of  objects  (both  real  and  fanciful)  of 
which  they  have  had  no  experience,  but  which 
must  have  figured  much  in  the  imaginations  of 
their  remote  ancestors,  seems  to  point  to  the  in- 
heritance by  the  race  of  some  traces  of  such  ances- 
tral experience.  It  is  difficult  to  account  in  any 
other  way  for  the  spontaneous  and  vivid  interest 
of  almost  all  European  children  in  stories  of  fairies, 
goblins,  ghosts,  witches,  wolves,  bears,  caves,  and 
enchanted  forests.  Fifthly,  the  development  of 
moral  sentiments  in  many  children,  their  resent- 
ment of  injustice,  their  appreciation  of  honesty 
and  truth-telling,  and  other  such  moral  reactions, 
seems  so  spontaneous  and  untaught  that  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  believe  that  these  moral  reactions  or  moral 
sentiments  are  not,  in  some  manner  and  degree, 
preformed  or  hereditary  in  their  constitution. 
There  seem  to  be  large  differences  between  chil- 

" General  Introduction  to  Psycho-analysis"  he  writes:  "I 
am  of  the  opinion  that  these  primal  phantasies  .  .  .  are 
a  phylogenetic  possession.  In  them  the  individual  reaches 
out  beyond  his  own  Ufe,  into  the  experiences  of  antiquity. 
...  It  seems  very  possible  to  me  that  everything  which 
is  obtained  during  an  analysis  in  the  guise  of  phantasy 
.  .  .  were  once  reaHties  in  the  primeval  existence  of  man- 
kind, and  that  the  imaginative  child  is  merely  filling  in 
the  gaps  of  individual  truth  with  prehistoric  truth." 


MORAL  INSANITY  131 

dren  in  respect  of  the  ease  with  which  such  moral 
sentiments  develop  under  the  influence  of  exam- 
ple and  training.  And  if  the  opinion  widely  held 
by  ahenists  and  criminologists,  to  the  effect  that 
some  children  are  by  nature  insusceptible  of  moral 
training,  though  not  lacking  in  intelligence,  if  this 
opinion  is  not  utterly  baseless,  it  is  strong  evi- 
dence of  the  inheritance  by  the  normal  child 
of  some  preformed  moral  sentiments,  some  ten- 
dency for  such  sentiments  to  take  form  in  the 
mind  spontaneously,  however  much  their  devel- 
opment may  need  to  be  furthered  by  experience 
and  moral  training.  Again,  there  seem  to  be 
national  and  racial  differences  in  this  respect  which 
do  not  seem  to  be  wholly  explicable  in  terms  of  dif- 
ferences of  national  tradition.  There  are,  for  ex- 
ample, among  both  civilized  and  uncivilized  peo- 
ples, some  which  are  notoriously  untruthful;  some 
which  are  remarkably  chaste,  though  not  deficient 
in  the  sex  impulse;  some  as  remarkably  unchaste. 
A  sixth  kind  of  evidence,  pointing  in  the  same 
vague  way  to  a  greater  complexity  of  the  innate 
constitution  of  the  human  mind  than  is  commonly 
recognized  by  science,  is  afforded  by  the  testimony 
of  many  persons  whose  work  has  made  them 
famihar  with  aHen  races  and  with  cross-bred  races. 
Thus,  it  is  asserted  by  many  experienced  Anglo- 


132  COMPLEXITY  OF  INNATE  ENDOWMENT 

Indian  officials  that  education  of  Hindus  by  the 
methods  and  materials  used  in  European  educa- 
tion is  positively  deleterious  to  their  mental  devel- 
opment. And  it  is  widely  asserted  of  some  of 
the  populations  which  have  been  formed  by  the 
blending  of  widely  dissimilar  races,  that  both  the 
intellectual  and  moral  development  of  the  majority 
of  individuals  among  such  populations  is  seriously 
defective  in  some  obscure  and  ill-defined  way.  It 
is  often  alleged  that  such  persons  reveal  a  funda- 
mental lack  of  harmony  in  their  character,  an 
abnormal  liability  to  moral  conflict  and  disorder.^ 
I  will  venture  to  state  tentatively  the  view  to 
which  all  these  vague  lines  of  evidence  seem  to 
me  to  point.  The  innate  basis  of  the  mind  is 
richer,  more  complex,  than  present-day  science  is 
willing  to  admit.  On  both  the  moral  and  intellec- 
tual sides  the  innate  potentialities  are  richer,  more 
various,  and  more  specific,  than  can  be  described 
in  terms  of  degrees  of  intelligence  and  degrees  of 
strength  of  the  several  instinctive  impulses.  Just 
as  that  peculiarity  which  enables  a  man  to  become 

*  E.  g.,  "It  is  a  common  opinion,  held  by  the  blacks  as 
well  as  by  the  whites,  that  an  infusion  of  white  blood 
increases  the  intelligence  of  the  negro,  while  at  the  same 
time  lowering  his  moral  qualities."  (N.  S.  Shaler,  "The 
Neighbor.") 


THE  MOST  VALUABLE  QUALITY     133 

a  great  mathematician  (or  a  great  musician)  is 
certainly  innate  and  hereditary,  though  we  cannot 
define  or  conceive  in  what  this  hereditary  basis 
consists;  so  also  the  development  of  the  highest 
moral  character  only  proceeds  upon  the  basis  of 
a  hitherto  undefined  innate  and  hereditary  pecu- 
harity. 

This  undefined  innate  basis  of  moral  charac- 
ter is  perhaps  of  all  innate  qualities  the  most 
valuable  possession  of  any  human  stock.  It  is 
the  innate  basis  of  a  quality  w^hich  we  may 
best  name  dependability  or  trustworthiness.  This 
quality  is  no  simple  unit;  it  cannot  be  ascribed  to 
the  operation  of  any  one  instinct;  and,  though  it 
impHes  intelHgence,  it  is  not  closely  correlated 
with  high  intelHgence.  In  respect  of  this  complex 
and  vaguely  defined  quality,  races  and  peoples 
seem  to  differ  widely.  Without  its  presence  in  a 
high  degree,  no  people  can  achieve  or  sustain  a 
high  level  of  civilization.  Consider  how  the 
punctual  and  efficient  working  of  any  one  of  our 
great  public  services  implies  a  high  degree  of 
trustworthiness  on  the  part  of  a  vast  number  of 
persons.  When  we  see  a  great  mail-train  glide, 
punctual  to  the  minute,  into  the  railroad  depot, 
after  traversing  hundreds  or  thousands  of  miles 
of    varied    territory,    after    burrowing    through 


134  TRUSTWORTHINESS 

mountains,  crossing  great  rivers,  winding  through 
deep  gorges,  thundering  across  vast  plains,  we  do 
not  often  sufficiently  realize  on  how  many  human 
beings  this  achievement  has  depended,  or  how 
great  demands  on  their  trustworthiness  it  has 
made.  It  is  because  such  services  make  these 
great  demands  that  a  people  is  justly  proud  of 
the  efficiency,  the  punctuality,  the  freedom  from 
accident,  and  the  dependabihty  of  such  great 
public  services.  It  is  for  the  same  reason  that 
some  peoples,  even  among  the  civihzed  nations, 
seem  to  be  incapable  of  maintaining  efficient  ser- 
vices of  this  kind.  It  is  for  this  reason  that, 
among  many  peoples  which  have  established  such 
services,  the  posts  of  critical  responsibility  are 
generally  filled  by  foreigners,  men  of  a  different 
race  which  seems  to  be  more  highly  endowed  with 
this  complex  quality  of  trustworthiness.  It  is  not 
too  much  to  claim  for  this  quality  that  it  is  more 
important  than  any  other,  intelligence  not  ex- 
cepted, for  the  maintenance  of  a  high  level  of 
civiKzation.  If,  in  any  people  that  has  attained 
such  a  high  level,  this  quality  should  decline 
(statistically)  we  might  anticipate  a  correspond- 
ing decline  in  the  efficiency  of  all  its  public  ser- 
vices. We  might  expect  to  see  its  police  force 
become  corrupt,  its  courts  of  justice  less  efficient. 


INTELLIGENCE  AND  MORAL  QUALITY    135 

its  criminals  bolder  and  more  numerous,  its  post- 
al deliveries  irregular^  its  railroad  trains  unpunc- 
tual  and  subject  to  many  accidents,  its  bank- 
ruptcies and  commercial  panics  more  frequent,  its 
strikes  more  reckless;  and  in  war,  the  supreme 
test,  it  would,  in  spite  of  much  bravery  and  high 
inteUigence,  be  relatively  ineffective.  This  is  ad- 
mittedly the  expression  of  a  somewhat  specula- 
tive opinion  which  cannot  claim  to  be  founded  on 
scientifically  established  facts. 

Another  speculative  question  may  be  touched 
on  here,  namely — Is  there  any  correlation  between 
high  intelligence  and  the  possession  of  the  more 
desirable  moral  quahties;  that  is,  do  these  tend 
to  ^'go  together";  are  highly  intelligent  persons 
(statistically)  on  the  whole  better  equipped  with 
moral  qualities  than  less  intelligent  persons  ?  Pro- 
fessor Terman^  provides  some  evidence  that  there 
is  positive  correlation  between  intelligence  and  the 
possession  of  the  better  moral  qualities,  and  one  of 
considerable  degree.  If  this  result  is  accepted  it 
does  not  necessarily  follow  that  the  correlation  is 
hereditary;  but  it  is  difficult  to  account  for  it  in 
any  other  way.  If  such  hereditary  correlation 
were  established,  it  would  be  a  fact  of  the  very 
first  importance;  for  the  methods  of  measuring 

*  "Intelligence  of  School  Children,"  p.  58. 


136     CHANGES  OF  MORAL  QUALITIES 

intelligence,  which  have  been  proved  to  be  trust- 
worthy by  so  many  extensive  researches  of  recent 
years,  would  then  provide  an  indirect  measure  of 
the  moral  quaHties,  which,  though  fallible  in  indi- 
vidual cases,  would  be  statistically  trustworthy.^ 

I  mentioned  Doctor  Jung's  theory  of  archetypes, 
not  only  because  it  serves  as  a  warning  against 
dogmatic  negation,^  but  because  it  raises  in  an 
acute  form  two  closely  allied  questions  that  are 
of  prime  importance  for  our  main  topic — namely, 
the  question  of  the  persistence  of  peculiarities  of 
mental  endowment,  and  the  question  of  the  modes 
and  influences  by  which  they  undergo  change. 

I I  have  found  only  one  other  piece  of  evidence  directly 
supporting  Professor  Terman's.  Mr.  H.  V.  Race  ("A 
Study  of  a  Class  of  Children  of  Superior  IntelHgence," 
Journal  of  Edticational  Psychology,  191 8),  by  the  aid 
of  mental  tests,  selected  from  a  large  number  of  chil- 
dren twenty-one  who  showed  the  highest  degree  of  intelU- 
gence.  He  then  studied  these  twenty-one  children  inten- 
sively and  concluded  that  "they  are  apt  to  be  unusually 
able  in  various  fields  of  human  learning,"  and  "they 
are  highly  social  in  the  scientific  sense  of  the  term.  They 
tend  to  have  good  dispositions  and  lend  themselves  gen- 
erously to  the  needs  of  the  group." 

'A  warning  especially  important  in  \dew  of  the  fact 
that  some  reactionary  psychologists  are  showing  a  ten- 
dency to  revert  to  the  old  view  that  the  innate  basis  of 
the  mind  comprises  nothing  more  than  a  number  of  sim- 
ple reflex  tendencies. 


INTELLECTUAL  QUALITIES  137 

Before  turning  to  these  topics,  let  me  sum  up 
on  the  differences  of  innate  mental  qualities  which 
seem  to  be  well-founded  rather  than  speculative 
assumptions.  We  have  seen  that  the  three  great 
races  of  Europe  seem  to  have  possessed  distinc- 
tive moral  quahties,  that  these  are,  just  like  the 
physical  quahties  of  those  races,  represented  in 
the  modem  peoples  in  various  degrees  and  com- 
binations, according  to  the  proportions  in  which 
they  inherit  the  blood  of  these  three  chief  races. 
We  have  no  evidence  that  these  races,  or  the 
peoples  formed  by  their  partial  blendings,  dif- 
fer in  degree  of  intellectual  capacity.  But,  nev- 
ertheless, in  their  highest  achievements,  in  the 
production  of  which  intellect  and  character  co- 
operate, we  see  evidences  of  qualitative  differ- 
ences in  the  working  of  their  minds — in  art  and 
religion  and  poHtics,  as  we  have  seen,  and  I  think 
we  may  safely  add  in  philosophy  and  science.  In 
these  most  purely  intellectual  spheres,  general  dif- 
ferences are  widely  recognized  and  may,  I  think, 
be  attributed  to  the  same  moral  pecuUarities, 
subtly  influencing  and  moulding  the  national  tra- 
ditions of  thought.  The  clearness  and  perfection 
of  expression  of  the  French  and  Italians,  their 
preference  for  logical  order  and  the  deductive 
principle,    their    formahsm,    their    rationalism — 


138  ENGLISH  INTELLECT 

these  are  traditional  national  characteristics. 
They  seem  to  be  connected  with  the  impetuous- 
ness,  the  immediacy  of  expression,  and  the  strong 
sociability  of  the  Mediterranean  race;  for  these 
have  moulded  the  languages  into  instruments  of 
vivid  clear-cut  logical  communication. 

The  strength  of  the  EngHsh  intellect  is  its  em- 
piricism, its  constant  appeal  not  to  established 
and  clearly  formulated  principles  from  which  it 
may  deduce  conclusions,  but  rather  to  new  facts. 
It  constantly  goes  out,  like  the  pioneers  so  well 
described  by  Volney,  alone  and  unconcerned  by 
its  loneliness,  its  detachment  from  all  intellectual 
precedent  and  companionship,  and  looks  for  new 
facts  and  new  explanations,  without  feehng  the 
need  of  fitting  these  into  the  framework  of  a  sin- 
gle logical  and  consistent  system. 

The  German  intellect  shows  the  reflective  per- 
sistency of  the  introversion  common  to  its  two 
chief  constituent  races;  in  its  strong  regard  for  sys- 
tem and  organization,  in  its  tendency  to  accept  as 
true  whatever  is  socially  and  officially  recognized 
as  part  of  the  system  of  thought,  it  reveals  the 
submissive  and  highly  sociable  tendencies;  while 
it  lacks  something  of  the  clearness  of  the  Medi- 
terraneans and  of  the  pioneering  independence 
and  empirical  curiosity  of  the  English. 


ACQUIRED  QUALITIES  TRANSMITTED  ?    139 

We  have  found  reason  to  believe  that  men  and 
races  differ  in  their  innate  mental  constitution, 
on  both  the  intellectual  and  the  moral  sides.  Do 
such  pecuharities  persist  through  hundreds,  per- 
haps thousands,  of  generations?  Or  is  the  in- 
nate basis  of  the  mind  plastic,  easily  transformed  ? 
Can  a  few  generations  of  intellectual  education 
and  moral  training  appreciably  modify  or  im- 
prove the  innate  constitution  of  any  population? 

The  answer  depends  upon  the  answer  to  an  un- 
solved biological  problem,  the  most  urgent  of  all 
the  biological  problems;  one  the  answer  to  which 
profoundly  concerns  every  state,  and  especially 
these  United  States  of  America;  for  many  great 
questions  of  public  policy  should  be  determined 
largely  by  the  answer  to  this  biological  problem, 
the  problem — Are  acquired  qualities  transmitted 
from  one  generation  to  another?  The  two  great 
EngHsh  founders  of  the  modem  theory  of  evo- 
lution, Darwin  and  Spencer,  believed  in  such 
transmission.  But  at  present  the  majority  of  bi- 
ologists say — No.  This  negation  is  based  upon, 
deduced  from,  a  theory  of  a  German  professor, 
Weissman,  a  theory  which  may  or  may  not  be  true. 
Now,  one  good  result  of  the  Great  War  is  that  we 
have  broken  away  from  the  thraldom  to  theories 
of  German  professors  to  which  the  scientific  world 


I40     PERSISTENT  PHYSICAL  QUALITIES 

submitted  before  the  war;  and  this  particular 
theory  is  abready  less  confidently  held.  The 
theory  can  be  tested  and  the  problem  can  be 
solved  by  intelligently  directed  experiment.^ 

Such  research  must  occupy  some  years  at  least, 
and  in  the  meantime  we  have  a  vast  amount  of 
printed  matter  but  no  decisive  facts  to  go  upon. 
But  from  many  biological  facts  we  can  make  this 
inference  with  some  confidence.  Innate  qualities 
are  in  the  main  very  persistent;  and,  even  if  modi- 
fications or  qualities  acquired  by  use  are  trans- 
mitted, the  accumulation  of  such  effects  is  in 
most,  probably  aU,  cases  a  very  sHght  and  slow 
and  gradual  process,  requiring  many  generations 
to  produce  an  appreciable  degree  of  effect. 

The  persistence  of  physical  qualities  is  most 
impressive.  We  have  portraits  of  Egyptians  who 
lived  many  thousand  years  ago,  which  closely 
resemble  living  men  of  the  same  region.  We  have 
instances  of  isolated  patches  of  population  which, 
amid  all  the  shiftings  and  blendings  of  European 

^  I  may  say  that  in  Harvard  College  we  have  put  in 
hand  a  long  experiment  which  should  eventually  give  us 
a  definite  answer  to  this  profoundly  important  problem 
— on  one  condition — namely,  that  we  can  secure  the  small 
funds  needed  to  carry  the  experiment  through  to  its  con- 
clusion. 


CHANGES  OF  RACIAL  QUALITIES    141 

peoples,  seem  to  have  remained  unchanged  in 
physical  type  for  many  thousands  of  years  {e.  g,, 
the  island  of  population  of  the  Cro-Magnon  type  in 
the  Dordogne  region  of  France^.  We  have  the 
curious  fact  that  the  blood  of  various  races  shows 
chemical  reactions  pecuHar  to  each  race.  As  Pro- 
fessor Ripley  says:  "The  persistence  of  ethnic 
pecuHarities  through  many  generations  is  beyond 
question''  (page  120).  On  the  other  hand,  there 
are  instances  in  which  change  of  habitat  or  of 
mode  of  life  seems  to  have  produced  a  slowly 
accumulating  change  of  racial  quahties;  e.  g.,  Hfe 
in  hill  country  and  Hfe  m  complex  civiHzed  com- 
munities—both these  seem  in  the  course  of  many 
generations  to  produce  somehow  a  raising  of  the 
cephahc  index,  that  is,  a  relative  broadening  of 
the  skull. 

We  must  therefore  compare  branches  of  the 
same  race  which  have  Hved  widely  apart;  if  these 
remain  ahke,  and  if  also  branches  of  unHke  races 
which  have  long  lived  under  sunilar  conditions 
continue  to  show  in  full  their  racial  differences, 
then  we  have  good  evidence  of  persistence  of  ra- 
cial qualities  m  spite  of  environmental  influences. 
Such  instances  are  known.  The  Negro  race  has 
long  lived  in  widely  separated  areas— in  Africa, 

iQ".  Ripley's  "Races  of  Europe,"  p.  179. 


142    PERSISTENCE  OF  MENTAL  QUALITIES 

Malaysia,  the  West  Indies,  North  and  South 
America.  Yet  it  continues  to  show  in  all  these 
areas  the  same  fundamental  physical  qualities, 
and,  what  is  more  important,  the  same  mental 
qualities.  And  in  Malaysia  and  the  Pacific  we 
see  populations  of  Malay  and  of  Polynesian  and 
of  Negro  blood  which  have  long  lived  under  well- 
nigh  identical  conditions,  and  which  nevertheless 
continue  to  exhibit  in  full  degree  the  physical  and 
the  mental  differences  of  these  races.  These  facts 
were  pointed  out  by  A.  R.  Wallace,  and  I  have 
myself  observed  them.  Some  of  you  may  assent 
easily  to  the  view  that  physical  qualities  are  very 
persistent;  but  may  find  it  difficult  to  accept  the 
same  view  of  mental  qualities.  For  bones  and 
skulls  are  solid  tangible  objects;  they  seem  dura- 
ble and  persistent.  But  how  can  such  intangi- 
ble immaterial  entities  as  mental  qualities  persist 
unchanged  for  thousands  of  years?  Well,  even 
the  qualities  of  the  bony  framework  are  handed 
down  in  an  utterly  mysterious  manner,  which 
biologists  try  to  make  a  little  less  mysterious  by  in- 
voking the  "continuity  of  the  germ-plasm."  And 
the  transmission  of  mental  qualities  is  no  more 
and  no  less  mysterious  than  that  of  physical  quah- 
ties.  But  it  is  well  to  realize  that  such  mental 
qualities  as  the  instincts  are  among  the  most 


ENDURANCE  OF  INSTINCTS         143 

durable  things  we  know.  The  great  instincts 
common  to  most  of  the  higher  animals  were 
evolved  long  before  mountain  ranges  such  as  the 
Alps  assumed  their  present  form;  and  they  may 
well  survive  when  all  the  mountains  that  we 
know  shall  have  been  worn  away. 

Indirect  evidence  and  general  considerations 
point  to  the  great  persistence  of  innate  mental 
qualities,  even  under  changed  conditions.  The 
early  descriptions  of  the  moral  qualities  of  the 
inhabitants  of  Europe  and  especially  of  Gaul, 
which  have  come  down  to  us  from  Tacitus  and 
Caesar  and  others,  seem  to  show  that  the  Nordics 
and  the  Alpines  and  the  Mediterraneans  of  that 
time  were  distinguished  by  the  same  pecuHarities 
which  mark  them  now  and  which,  throughout  the 
historic  period,  have  played  their  parts  in  deter- 
mining the  forms  of  their  art,  of  their  customs, 
and  of  their  institutions. 

Even  the  evidence  of  Jung  and  his  disciples, 
which  perhaps  is  the  best  evidence  we  have  of 
the  gradual  modification  of  innate  mental  quali- 
ties by  transmission  of  the  effects  of  use,  is  never- 
theless at  the  same  time  evidence  of  the  strong 
persistence  of  such  quaHties.  For  the  observers 
of  this  school  claim  to  be  able  to  trace  in  Hving 
men  the  influences  of  customs  and  ways  of  think- 


144    SUPERIORITY  OF  SAVAGE  ANCESTORS 

ing  which  seem  to  have  been  impressed  on  the 
race  thousands  of  years  ago  and  which  have  per- 
sisted in  spite  of  all  the  vicissitudes  of  the  peoples 
of  Europe  in  the  historic  period. 

Is  there  any  evidence  of  the  opposite  kind, 
pointing  to  rapid  change  and  plasticity  of  the 
racial  mental  constitution?  It  is  difficult  to  find 
any.  One  popular  fallacy  which  is  commonly 
accepted  as  such  evidence  we  may  dispose  of  in 
a  few  words.  It  is  often  supposed  that  the  superi- 
ority of  civiHzed  man  to  his  savage  forefathers  is 
an  innate  superiority,  which  he  owes  to  his  long- 
continued  subjection  to  the  influences  of  culture. 
It  is  agreed  by  those  who  have  considered  the 
matter  that  there  is  no  good  ground  for  this 
belief.  The  superiority  of  civilized  man  consists 
in,  or  arises  in  the  main  from,  the  fact  that  he  has 
at  his  command  all  the  accumulated  resources 
and  traditions  of  civilization.  There  is  no  good 
evidence  for  the  belief  that  he  is  in  any  way  in- 
nately superior  to  his  savage  ancestors.  In  fact, 
the  probability  seems  to  be  that  he  is  (statisti- 
cally) inferior. 


\  VI 

We  are  now  in  a  position  to  return  a  considered 
answer  to  the  question  as  to  the  influence  of  in- 
nate racial  quahties  upon  the  course  of  national 
life,  which  we  formulated  concretely  in  our  second 
lecture.  You  will  remember  that  we  put  the 
question  in  this  form.  If  every  infant  of  one 
nation  were  substituted  for  one  of  another  nation, 
until  the  two  peoples  were  completely  exchanged, 
what  effects  would  this  substitution  have  upon 
their  subsequent  history?  Let  us  imagine  this  to 
have  been  done  in  the  year  1200  A.  D.  to  the 
French  and  British  peoples.  Obviously,  there 
would  have  been  produced  no  sudden  or  violent 
change  of  the  course  of  national  life  in  either 
country.  But  would  there  not  have  taken  place 
a  gradual  change  of  customs,  laws,  and  institu- 
tions in  both  countries,  so  that  in  many  respects 
they  would  have  approximated  to  one  another; 
and  then  perhaps  have  diverged,  after  a  crossing 
of  their  paths?  Is  it  not  probable,  for  example, 
that  France  would  not  only  have  conquered  great 
areas  of  the  earth,  but  would  have  held  and  peo- 
pled them,  and  that  with  her  more  ancient  and 

I4S 


146  FRANCE  AND  ENGLAND 

mature  civilization  she  would  have  dominated 
the  world?  Is  it  not  probable  that  the  national 
institutions  of  France  would  have  graduall}'  ac- 
quired a  more  particularist  or  individualist  form; 
and  that  in  England  administration  would  have 
become  more  centralized,  the  family  more  unified, 
the  laws  in  general  less  adapted  to  give  free  play 
to  individual  initiative?  Is  it  not  probable  that 
the  laws  of  England  would  have  been  codified, 
and  those  of  France  left  a  chaos  of  precedents,  of 
judicial  decisions,  of  legislative  compromises,  all 
unrelated  and  unharmonized  by  any  clear  logical 
principles  or  rational  system  ? 

Let  me  state  more  generally  the  view  to  which 
all  our  evidence  seems  to  point.  Each  people  that 
has  attained  a  high  level  of  civihzation  has  done 
so  on  the  basis  of  the  intellectual  and  moral  quali- 
ties of  the  races  which  have  entered  into  its  com- 
position. The  combination  of  qualities  peculiar 
to  each  race  was  formed  and  fixed  during  long 
ages  of  the  prehistoric  period,  compared  with 
which  the  historic  period  of  some  2,500  years  is 
very  brief. 

These  native  qualities  are  the  capital,  as  it  were, 
with  which  a  people  sets  out  on  the  path  of  civihza- 
tion. They  are  subject  to  only  slow  changes;  but 
they  do  change,  if  factors  making  for  change  con- 


A  NATION'S  CAPITAL  147 

tinue  to  operate  in  the  same  direction  during 
many  generations.  But,  like  all  highly  developed 
qualities  of  animals  and  plants,  the  qualities  most 
necessary  for  the  development  and  support  of 
civilization  are  more  readily  subject  to  decay  or 
diminution  than  to  further  development. 

Each  people  is  endowed  with  qualities  which 
incline  it  to  civiUzation  of  a  particular  type,  and 
which  render  it  capable  of  supporting  a  civiliza- 
tion of  a  given  degree  of  complexity.  Each  pro- 
gressive people  thus  tends  to  reach  the  Umit  of 
complexity  of  civiHzation  which  is  prescribed  for  it 
by  its  innate  qualities;  when  that  Hmit  is  reached, 
it  ceases  to  progress  and  is  very  liable  to  actual 
retrogression  or  decay.  For  under  civilization  its 
quahties  tend  to  deteriorate,  rather  than  to  im- 
prove. 

Let  us  now  examine  this  last  statement. 

The  influences  which  may  produce  changes  of 
racial  qualities  are  of  three  kinds. 

(i)  Reversion.  This  is  a  doubtful  factor.  It  is 
held  by  some  biologists  that  any  highly  developed 
race  will  deteriorate,  if  its  qualities  are  not  main- 
tained by  continued  selection.  And  it  is  held 
that  isolation  of  any  race  is  necessary  for  the 
maintenance  of  its  special  qualities;  for  cross- 
breeding with  other  races  tends  to  produce  rever- 


148     CIVILIZATION  THE  DESTROYER 

sion  to  the  lower  ancestral  type.  There  is  some 
reason  to  fear  that  the  miscegenation  which  is 
going  on  so  widely  between  human  stocks  is  hav- 
ing this  effect;  and  not  only  on  theoretical  grounds. 
There  are  some  faint  empirical  indications  of  it; 
for  example,  the  northern  peoples  of  Europe  are 
steadily  losing  their  fair  complexion — the  average 
complexion  is  darkening;  and,  as  the  fair  com- 
plexion is  undoubtedly  a  recent  specialization,  this 
looks  like  a  case  of  reversion.  Possibly,  then,  re- 
version of  mental  qualities  is  also  going  on.  But 
it  is  possible  that  this  darkening  of  the  complexion 
of  the  mixed  populations  of  northern  Europe  is  an 
effect  of  a  selection  which  favors  the  darker  strains; 
for  these  seem  to  be  more  resistant  to  the  unfavor- 
able influences  of  town  and  factory  life. 

(2)  Transmission  of  acquired  qualities,  of  the 
effects  of  use,  is  a  possibility.  If  it  is  an  actual 
factor,  what  must  have  been  its  most  general 
effect  under  civilization?  Which  kind  of  life  is 
more  suited  to  develop  to  the  utmost  and,  by 
much  exercise,  impress  more  strongly  on  a  popu- 
lation the  more  valuable  qualities — intelHgence, 
independence,  initiative,  providence,  the  parental 
and  altruistic  tendency,  curiosity,  and  trustworthi- 
ness (for  these  seem  to  be  the  most  valuable  of 
the  fundamental  innate  qualities)  ?    Wliich  mode 


PRIMITIVE  AND  CIVILIZED  EDUCATION  149 

of  life,  I  ask,  is  more  suited  to  develop  these  by 
exercise — that  of  the  hunter,  herdsman,  warrior, 
cultivator,  living  in  a  weU-defined  social  unit, 
such  as  a  village  community;  or  the  life  of  a  wage- 
laborer,  a  mill-hand,  a  shop-assistant  or  small 
clerk,  in  one  of  our  highly  civilized  nations? 
There  can  be  no  doubt,  I  think,  that  the  advan- 
tage is  with  the  former  more  natural  mode  of  Hfe. 
We  must  remember  that  universal  schooling  is  a 
recent  and  but  partially  achieved  ideal,  and  that 
schooling  is  but  an  imperfect  substitute  for  the 
education  that  a  boy  gets  from  living  vividly  the 
natural  life.  This  factor,  then,  probably  makes 
for  deterioration,  if  it  is  operative  at  all. 

(3)  Selection.  It  is  of  the  very  essence  of  civ- 
ilization that,  as  it  progresses,  it  aboHshes  more 
and  more  completely  the  operation  of  the  various 
forms  of  natural  selection  which  in  primitive  peo- 
ples undoubtedly  tend  to  maintain  and  promote 
the  racial  quahties.  And,  in  our  modern  western 
nations,  medical  science,  charitable  organization, 
and  protective  legislation  have  pretty  well  achieved 
the  aboHtion  of  natural  selection. 

Sexual  selection  may  have  helped  to  evolve 
the  higher  racial  qualities.  Under  modern  condi- 
tions, with  the  prevalence  of  monogamy  and  of 
the  excess  of  females  over  males,  it  can  hardly  be 


I50  FORMS  OF  SELECTION 

operative.  And  modern  feminism  is  withdrawing 
more  and  more  of  the  best  of  the  women  from 
marriage  and  motherhood.^ 

Instead  of  natural  and  sexual  selection,  we  have 
operative  a  number  of  forms  of  selection,  all  of 
which  seem  to  be  injurious  to  the  race. 

Military  selection  involves  the  death  of  many 
of  the  best  and  boldest;  and  it  withholds  other 
well-endowed  men  from  early  marriage,  leaving 
that  privilege  to  the  physically  and  mentally  de- 
fective. 

Selection  by  the  towns.  The  towns  tend  to 
attract  the  most  vigorous,  the  most  capable  and 
enterprising  of  the  young  people  of  the  country- 
side; in  each  generation  they  stream  into  the 
towns,  leaving  an  inferior  residue  in  the  villages 
and  farms.  In  New  England,  as  in  Old  England, 
the  phenomenon  is  so  well  known  that  it  is  need- 
less to  insist  on  it.    But  it  is  not  so  generally 


^  I  have  no  space  to  show  the  facts  and  inferences,  and 
must  refer  the  reader  to  an  essay  by  Mr.  S.  H.  Halford  on 
*'Dysgenic  Tendencies,"  in  the  volume  on  "Population 
and  Birth-Control,"  edited  by  C.  and  E.  Paul,  New  York, 
191 7.  His  conclusion  is:  "In  any  case  there  seems  no 
other  prospect,  if  the  full  feminist  ideal  be  realized,  than 
the  entire  extinction  of  British  and  American  intelligence 
within  the  next  two  or  three  generations"  (p.  232). 


THE  VORTEX  OF  THE  CITY         151 

appreciated  that  the  towns  not  only  withdraw 
the  best  from  the  countryside,  but  destroy  these 
selected  strains.  For  a  variety  of  reasons,  the 
town  population  does  not  maintain  itself.  The 
great  towns  are  vortices  which  suck  in  the  best  of 
the  population;  and,  from  the  racial  point  of  view, 
they  destroy  it,  for  they  destroy  its  natural  fer- 

tihty. 

This  destructive  dysgenic  influence  of  the 
towns  is  a  part  of  a  wider  phenomenon,  namely, 
the  operation  of  the  social  ladder  which  enables 
men  to  pass  easily  up  or  down  the  social  scale. 
In  all  civihzed  societies,  except  those  founded 
upon  a  rigid  caste  system,  the  social  ladder  exists; 
and  every  step  forward  in  democratic  organiza- 
tion, everything  that  throws  the  world  more  com- 
pletely open  to  talent,  that  finds  the  right  man  for 
the  right  place  and  the  square  peg  for  the  square 
hole,  educational  facihties,  scholarships,  person- 
nel agencies— all  such  things  contribute  to  the 
perfection  of  the  social  ladder  by  which  the  ascent 
of  merit  and  the  descent  of  ineptitude  are  made 

easy. 

Now  an  effective  social  ladder  in  any  nation  is 
a  most  unportant  agency  for  the  advancement  of 
its  civihzation.  In  its  absence,  talent  will  not 
find  due  scope;  the  men  who,  by  reason  of  superior 


152  THE  SOCIAL  LADDER 

endowments,  are  its  natural  leaders  will  not  come 
to  the  front.  And  that  such  men  should  be  pro- 
duced by  a  people  and  should  achieve  a  due  influ- 
ence upon  and  leadership  in  every  form  of  activity, 
in  government,  in  science,  in  art,  in  commerce 
and  industry,  is  the  most  essential  condition  of 
national  prosperity  and  national  progress.^  Hence 
the  nation  with  the  best  social  ladder,  other  things 
being  the  same,  will  for  a  tune  progress  most 
rapidly. 

The  social  ladder  tends  to  produce  a  social 
stratification;  it  tends  to  a  differentiation  of 
society  into  superimposed  strata  of  unequal  value. 
That  this  has  actually  occurred  is  indicated  by  the 
few  experimental  observations  which  I  put  before 
you  in  support  of  the  proposition  that  degrees  of 
intelligence  are  hereditary.  We  need  many  more 
such  investigations. 2    But  the  fact  is  shown  by 

1  This  position  is  argued  at  some  length  in  my  "  Group 
Mind." 

*  Mr.  A.  W.  Kornhauser  has  recently  provided  fresh 
evidence  in  a  paper  on  "The  Economic  Standing  of 
Parents  and  the  Intelligence  of  Their  Children"  {Journal 
of  Educational  Psychology^  vol.  IX,  1918).  He  examined 
1,000  children,  drawn  from  five  schools  of  the  city  of  Pitts- 
burgh. Of  these  schools  A  and  B  were  attended  chiefly  by 
the  children  of  the  poorer  classes,  largely  unskilled  manual 
workers;  C  and  D  by  children  of  a  more  prosperous  class, 


ENGLAND'S  CLASSES  153 

common  observation  also;  the  process  has  gone 
farthest  in  the  country  in  which  the  social  ladder 
has  been  longest  in  effective  operation.  Of  Euro- 
pean countries,  England  is  that  country;  hence  we 
find  that,  as  various  observers  have  said,  England 
is  a  land  of  great  contrasts;  and  the  top  stratum  in 
England,  the  upper  professional  and  commercial 

largely  skilled  artisans  and  small  shopkeepers;  E  by  chil- 
dren of  parents  in  very  comfortable  circumstances.  He 
found  that  the  groups  from  A  and  B  "show  a  very  large 
proportion  of  Retarded,  with  an  almost  negligible  num- 
ber of  Advanced";  C  and  D  groups  "have  the  most 
nearly  normal  distribution  of  Retarded  and  Advanced"; 
the  E  group  "shows  the  opposite  tendency  from  the  first 
two  schools  (A  and  B),  namely,  a  very  small  proportion 
of  Retarded,  with  a  comparatively  large  percentage  of 
Advanced  pupils.  These  data  in  themselves  give  some 
indication  of  the  marked  association  between  economic 
status  and  school  advancement,  and  undoubtedly  would 
be  much  more  striking  if  the  different  schools  had  a  sys- 
tem of  uniform  grading;  for  there  can  be  no  question  that 
there  is  a  tendency  for  the  general  lower  ability  in  the 
poor  school  to  be  compensated  by  a  general  lower  stand- 
ard of  grading  and  vice  versa  in  the  wealthier  school." 
That  is  to  say,  if  the  several  schools  had  the  same  standard 
of  grading,  the  superiority  of  intelligence  of  the  children 
of  school  E  over  the  others  (and  of  schools  C  and  D  over 
A  and  B)  would  be  revealed  even  more  strikingly.  The 
same  observer  obtained  a  similar  result  by  a  different 
procedure.  Taking  the  possession  of  a  telephone  in  the 
home  as  an  indicator  of  good  economic  status  of  the 


154 


ENGLAND'S  MASSES 


classes,  together  with  the  aristocracy,  which  is 
constantly  recruited  from  them  (and  from  Amer- 
ica), is  probably  richer  in  valuable  human  quali- 
ties than  any  other  large  human  group  now  exist- 
ing— or  was  so  before  the  war;  while  the  lower 
strata  contain  a  deplorable  proportion  of  human 
beings  of  poor  quality.^ 

parents,  and  dividing  all  the  children  into  the  three 
groups — Retarded,  Normal,  and  Advanced — he  found  that 
the  following  percentages  of  these  three  groups  had  tele- 
phones in  the  home:  of  the  Retarded  19  per  cent;  of  the 
Normal  32  per  cent;  of  the  Advanced  50  per  cent.  These 
facts  afford  valuable  confirmation  of  the  observations  on 
the  correlation  of  intelligence  with  social  status,  set  out 
in  the  second  lecture.  For  in  this  case  the  estimation  of 
the  intelligence  of  the  children  was  made  by  the  school- 
teachers. The  terms  Retarded  and  Advanced  mean  that 
the  child  is  below  or  above  the  school  grade  in  which  the 
average  age  is  that  of  the  child  in  question.  This  ques- 
tion is  so  important  that  it  seems  worth  while  to  add  the 
table  showing  the  percentages  of  the  three  classes — Re- 
tarded, Normal,  and  Advanced — ^in  the  five  schools  re- 
spectively. 


Retarded 

Normal 

Advanced 

A 

45-2 

36.7 
29.4 

28.8 

12.7 

47.1 
55-9 
50-4 

51-7 
62.7 

7.7 

7-4 

20.2 

19.6 

24.6 

B 

C 

D 

E 

See  Appendix  II. 


STERILITY  OF  SELECTED  CLASSES   155 

That  is  to  say,  the  operation  of  the  social  ladder 
tends  to  concentrate  the  valuable  qualities  of  the 
whole  nation  in  the  upper  strata,  and  to  leave  the 
lowest  strata  depleted  of  the  finer  quahties. 

This  provides  the  leadership  and  abiHty  re- 
quired for  the  flourishing  of  national  life  in  all  its 
departments,  and  in  so  far  is  good  and  beneficial. 
But  the  working  of  the  social  ladder  has  furtlier 
and  less  satisfactory  results.  The  upper  strata, 
which  contain  in  concentration  the  best  qualities 
of  the  nation,  and  which  are  capable  of  producing 
a  far  larger  proportion  of  men  fitted  for  leadership 
than  the  lower  strata,  become  relatively  infertile. 
The  causes  are  varied  and  complex,  and  in  the 
main  psychological:  late  marriage,  celibacy,  and 
restriction  of  the  family  after  marriage  are  the 
main  factors.^  This  is  not  a  new  phenomenon  or 
peculiar  to  any  one  or  a  few  countries.  It  is 
a  well-nigh  universal  phenomenon.  Roughly,  it 
may  be  said  to  be  due  to  the  outstripping  of  in- 

^  Herbert  Spencer  assumed  that  there  was  a  natural 
physiologically  grounded  inverse  correlation  between  fer- 
tility and  intellectual  development.  It  may  safely  be 
said  that  there  is  Httle  or  no  ground  for  this  assumption. 
The  inverse  correlation  is  well  marked,  but  it  is  grounded 
in  psychological  rather  than  physiological  factors,  and 
is  therefore  subject  to  rational  control  and  voluntary 
choice. 


156  THE  FATAL  PROCESS 

,  stinct  by  intelligence  in  these  favored  classes;  for 
1  instinct  cares  for  the  race;  intelligence,  save  in  its 
most  enlightened  forms,  for  the  individual.  It  is 
not  confined  to  the  topmost  stratum.  It  begins 
there  and  descends  through  the  strata  immedi- 
ately below.  In  Britain  it  has  reached  the  skilled- 
artisan  class,  the  pick  of  the  wage-earning  class, 
and  is  displayed  acutely  in  that  class.  Mean- 
while the  lowest  strata  continue  to  breed  at  a 
more  normal  rate;  the  birth-rate  remains  highest 
among  the  actual  mental  defectives.^  The  residua 
in  the  villages  continue  to  be  drained  more  com- 
pletely of  their  best  elements;  the  towns  sift  out 
the  best-endowed  of  these  immigrants  and  pass 
them  up  the  social  scale  to  become  steriHzed  by 
their  success.  The  process  tends  to  accelerate 
and  accentuate  itself  as  it  continues.  Thus,  the 
increasing  demands  of  a  civilization  of  progressing 

^The  present  situation  may  be  roughly  described  by 
saying  that  the  superior  half  of  the  population  is  ceasing 
to  produce  children  in  sufficient  numbers  to  replace  their 
parents,  while  the  lower  half  continues  to  multiply  itself 
freely  and  is  the  source  of  all  increase  of  population.  The 
same  statement  is  probably  roughly  true  of  America.  The 
phenomenon  is  world-wide.  As  Mr.  Halford  says  {loc. 
cit.):  "The  higher  races  are  using  the  resources  of  scien- 
tific knowledge  to  reduce  the  death-rate  of  the  inferior 
peoples  and  the  birth-rate  of  the  superior." 


DEMAND   OUTRUNS  SUPPLY         157 

complexity  are  for  a  time  met  by  the  operation  of 
the  social  ladder.    But  it  is  a  process  which  can- 
not continue  indefinitely.     There  must  come  a 
time  when  the  lower  strata,  drained  of  all  their 
best  strains,  can  no  longer  supply  recruits  who 
can  effectively  fill  the  gaps  in  the  upper  strata 
and  serve  as  efficient  leaders  in  all  the  arts  and 
sciences  of  civilization.     With  increasing  demands 
and  diminishing  supply,  a  point  must  be  reached 
at  which  the  supply  falls  short.     That  is  the  cli- 
max, the  cuhninating  point  of  the  parabola  of  that 
people;  when  a  people  reaches  that  point,  it  stands 
at  the  height  of  its  career,  but  it  stands  on  the 
brink  of  the  downward  plunge  of  the  curve. 

It  seems  to  me  highly  probable  that  several  of 
the  great  nations  are  approaching  or  have  reached 
that  point.  I  believe  that  Great  Britain  has  gone 
farther  than  any  other;  just  because  the  develop- 
ment of  democratic  institutions  has  proceeded 
more  uninterruptedly  and  successfully  and  for  a 
longer  time  than  in  any  other  people;  and  also 
because  her  stock  has  been  depleted  by  emigra- 
tion of  vast  numbers  of  persons  of  more  than 
average  vigor  and  quality.  But  British  compla- 
cency refuses  to  see  the  signs.  In  a  recent  leading 
article  The  Times  solemnly  repudiated  any  such 
notion,  asserting  that  the  nation  which  in  the 


158  GREAT  NEEDS  AND  GREAT  MEN    \ 

past  has  thrown  up  so  much  ability,  so  many 
great  men,  will  not  fail  to  produce  the  men  needed 
to  meet  all  future  demands.^  The  fatuous  beHef 
in  the  old  dictum,  that  the  great  occasion  or  the 
great  need  always  brings  forth  the  great  man  to 
lead  the  nation  over  its  difficulties,  should  have 
been  shaken  by  the  Great  War.  For  one  of  the 
most  striking  facts  of  that  prolonged  struggle  was 
the  failure  of  the  nations  involved  to  bring  forth 
great  men  adequate  to  their  needs.  Did  not  every 
nation,  France  alone  excepted,  fail  to  produce  a 
great  commander  by  land  or  sea?  Did  any  na- 
tion produce  a  great  statesman?  You  may  say 
that  the  problems  were  harder,  the  times  more 
difficult,  than  ever  before;  that  the  inadequacy  of 
men  was  relative  only  to  the  vastness  of  the  needs. 

^  The  London  Ttmes,  May  19,  1920.  After  citing  from 
the  report  of  the  registrar-general,  which  showed  clearly 
the  relative  infertility  of  the  educated  classes,  the  edi- 
torial runs:  "We  are  amused  rather  than  dismayed  by  the 
prophets  of  'racial  suicide'  and  have  complete  confidence 
in  the  capacity  of  the  English  stock  to  respond  to  all  the 
needs  of  the  future."  This  fatuously  complacent  utter- 
ance was  presumably  written  by  a  man  educated  at  Ox- 
ford, the  university  whose  leading  objects  of  study  are 
history  and  the  writings  of  Plato,  the  most  thorough- 
going eugenist  of  all  the  social  philosophers.  And  it  was 
written  after  the  Great  War,  which  has  done  incalculable 
and  irreparable  injury  to  the  British  stock. 


THE  SOCIAL  LADDER  AT  WORK     159 

Perhaps  it  was  so,  though  I  think  not.  But 
granting  this,  does  not  the  fact  remain  an  illustra- 
tion of  the  law  that  the  demands  of  civilization 
tend  to  outrun  the  qualities  of  its  bearers? 

During  the  years  of  the  French  revolution  and 
the  Napoleonic  wars,  many  soldiers  rose  from  the 
ranks  to  become  great  generals.  During  the  in- 
dustrial revolution  in  England  many  men  rose 
from  the  ranks  to  eminence  and  high  command, 
men  like  George  Stephenson,  and  many  others  of 
his  stamp. 

But  the  social  ladder  has  been  at  work  for 
several  generations  since  these  men  rose,  and 
with  fatal  efficiency.  Such  rising  has  become 
much  rarer  in  the  old  countries,  in  spite  of  the 
increased  encouragement  offered  in  the  way  of 
education  and  rewards. ^  And  is  it  clear  that  you 
in  America  are  in  a  better  position?  It  is  true 
that  your  population  is  recruited  largely  by  immi- 
gration. But  these  million-a-year  immigrants  are 
untested  material;  they  are  an  uncertain  quan- 
tity. ^    In  the  old  days  men  and  women  did  not 

1  This  fact  is  brought  out  by  Mr.  Havelock  Ellis's 
"Study  of  British  Genius." 

2 1  remind  you  that  two  observers  have  found  the  chil- 
dren of  Italian  immigrants  to  be  decidedly  lower  in  the 
scale  of  intellectual  capacity  than  those  of  the  older 
white  population. 


vBv 


1 60  ALTERED   IMMIGRATION 

emigrate  to  America,  unless  they  were  persons  of 
more  than  average  vigor,  initiative,  enterprise, 
and  independence.  But  the  steamship  compa- 
nies, and  the  spread  in  this  country  of  civiUzation 
and  of  immigrants  from  all  parts  of  the  world, 
have  altered  all  that.  And  your  social  ladder 
works  with  great  efhciency;  while  the  rule  of  the 
infertility  of  the  selected  classes  seems  to  be 
rigidly  maintained.^ 

You   in   New   England   cannot   maintain   the 

1  And  the  old  stock  is  dying  out.  Mr.  L.  Quessel  re- 
views the  evidence  of  "Race  Suicide  in  the  United  States" 
in  an  essay  in  the  volume  on  "Population  and  Birth- 
Control"  (edited  by  C.  and  E.  Paul)  and  concludes:  "Ail 
available  data  combine  to  prove  that  the  Anglo-American 
population  has  not  merely  attained  its  maximum,  but  has 
already  begun  to  decline."  He  adds:  "It  is  perfectly 
clear  that  the  low  birth-rate  among  the  Anglo-American 
population  is  not  the  result  of  natural  sterility,  but  is 
due  to  a  deliberate  restriction  of  births." 

In  this  all-important  matter  of  birth-control  the  posi- 
tion of  this  country  is  remarkable  and  uniquely  disas- 
trous. The  educated  classes  seem  to  cultivate  and  prac- 
tise the  principles  of  birth-control  more  assiduously  than 
any  other  class  of  persons  of  the  civilized  world,  while, 
mirahile  dictu,  they  maintain  laws  which  forbid  the  ex- 
tension of  the  knowledge  of  such  principles  to  the  mass 
of  the  people.  Doctor  M.  S.  Iseman  has  drawn  a  lurid 
picture  of  this  state  of  affairs  in  his  "Race  Suicide"  (New 
York,  191 2). 


AMERICAN   INTELLIGENCE  i6i 

fatuous  complacency  of  the  editor  of  the  London 
Times  I  For  you  have  first-hand  knowledge  of  old 
and  formerly  valuable  populations,  now  drained 
of  all  that  was  best  and  reduced  to  stagnation. 
You  exemplify  in  the  highest  degree  the  rule  of 
the  infertility  of  the  selected  classes.    You  have 


per  cent. 

The  curve  of  distribution  of  intelligence  in  the  young  manhood 
of  the  American  people,  as  revealed  by  army  tests,  runs  as 
in  the  figure. 

first-hand  acquaintance  with  the  process  of  sub- 
stitution of  population  of  one  type  by  another, 
and  with  the  consequent  social  effects.  For  you 
these  things  are  not  vague  and  fanciful  possibili- 
ties; they  are  actual.  They  should  lead  you  to 
concentrate  your  attention  on  these  demographic 
problems. 

Let  me  remind  you  of  our  curve  of  distribution 
of  intelligence.  Intelligence,  as  I  said,  is  only 
one  of  many  factors;  but  it  is  one  of  considerable 
importance. 


i62  AMERICAN   CIVILIZATION 

A  men  are  of  the  grade  which  ^'has  the  abiHty 
to  make  a  superior  record  in  college";  B  men  are 
"capable  of  making  an  average  record  in  college." 
C  men  are  "rarely  capable  of  finishing  a  high- 
school  course."  And  the  main  bulk  of  your  pop- 
ulation is  below  the  C  -|-  level. ^ 

1  That  is  to  say,  the  results  of  the  army  tests  indicate 
that  about  75  per  cent  of  the  population  has  not  sufficient 
innate  capacity  for  intellectual  development  to  enable  it 
to  complete  the  usual  high-school  course.  The  very  ex- 
tensive testing  of  school-children  carried  on  by  Professor 
Terman  and  his  colleagues  leads  to  closely  concordant 
results.  He  divides  the  children  on  the  basis  of  his  tests 
into  the  following  classes  (and  it  should  be  added  that  the 
school-status  of  the  children  and  the  judgments  of  their 
teachers  bear  out  the  grading  very  fully):  Border-line 
cases  (scoring  70-80  marks  in  the  testing).  These  roughly 
correspond  to  the  groups  D  —  and  E  of  the  army  tests,  and 
are  about  8  per  cent  of  the  whole  number  of  school-chil- 
dren. Of  these  Professor  Terman  says:  "According  to 
the  classical  definition  of  feeble-mindedness,  such  indi- 
viduals cannot  be  considered  defectives.  Hardly  any 
one  would  think  of  them  as  institutional  cases.  Among 
laboring  men  and  servant  girls  there  are  thousands  like 
them.  They  are  the  world's  hewers  of  wood  and  drawers 
of  water.  And  yet,  as  far  as  inteUigence  is  concerned,  the 
tests  have  told  the  truth.  These  boys  are  uneducable 
beyond  the  merest  rudiments  of  training.  No  amount  of 
school  instruction  will  ever  make  them  intelligent  voters 
or  capable  citizens  in  the  true  sense  of  the  word.  ...  It 
is  interesting  to  note  that  [children  of  this  grade]  represent 


THE  COLLEGE-BRED  163 

The  civilization  of  America  depends  on  your 
continuing  to  produce  A  and  B  men  in  fair  num- 
bers. And  at  present  the  A  men  are  4  per  cent, 
the  B  men  9  per  cent;  and  you  are  breeding 
from  the  lower  part  of  the  curve.  The  A 
men  and  B  men,  the  college-bred,  do  not  main- 

the  level  of  intelligence  which  is  very,  very  common  among 
Spanish-Indian  and  Mexican  families  of  the  Southwest 
and  also  among  Negroes.  Their  dulness  seems  to  be  racial, 
or  at  least  inherent  in  the  family  stocks  from  which  they 
come.  The  fact  that  one  meets  this  type  with  such  ex- 
traordinary frequency  among  Indians,  Mexicans,  and  Ne- 
groes suggests  quite  forcibly  that  the  whole  question  of 
racial  differences  in  mental  traits  will  have  to  be  taken  up 
anew,  and  by  experimental  methods."  Above  these  comes 
the  group  of  "  dull  normals "  (scoring  80-90  marks).  They 
constitute  about  15  per  cent  of  the  whole  number  and  cor- 
respond roughly  to  the  D  group  of  the  army  tests — "  they 
are  far  enough  below  the  actual  average  of  intelligence 
among  races  of  western  European  descent  that  they  cannot 
make  ordinary  school  progress."  The  third  group  is  of 
"average  intelligence"  (scoring  90-110  marks)  and  com- 
prises about  60  per  cent  of  the  whole  number.  "The  high 
school  does  not  fit  their  grade  of  intelUgence  as  well  as  the 
elementary  and  grammar  schools."  They  correspond 
roughly  to  the  groups  C  — ,  C,  and  the  lower  part  of  C  + 
of  the  army  tests.  Next  comes  the  group  of  "superior 
inteUigence"  (scoring  1 10-120  marks).  It  comprises 
about  15  per  cent  of  the  whole,  and  corresponds  to  the 
upper  part  of  group  C  +  and  to  groups  B  and  A  of  the 
army  tests. 


i64  A  VANISHING   CLASS 

tain  their  numbers,  while  the  population  swells 
enormously.^  If  this  goes  on  for  a  few  generations, 
will  not  the  A  men,  and  even  the  B  men,  become 
rare  as  white  elephants,  dropping  to  a  mere  frac- 
tion of  one  per  cent?    It  is  only  too  probable. 

The  present  tendency  seems  to  be  for  the 
whole  curve  to  shift  to  the  right  with  each  suc- 

^  Harvard  graduates,  it  is  said,  have  less  than  two  chil- 
dren apiece  on  the  average,  and  the  same  is  probably  true 
approximately  of  the  graduates  in  general.  With  the 
graduates  of  women's  colleges  the  case  seems  to  be  still 
worse.  Professor  J.  McK.  Cattell  asserts:  "Among  the 
educated  and  well-to-do  classes  the  number  of  children 
does  not  nearly  suffice  to  continue  the  race.  The  Harvard 
graduate  has  on  the  average  seven-tenths  of  a  son,  the 
Vassar  graduate  one-half  of  a  daughter"  {Popular  Science 
Monthly  J  January,  1909).  For  a  full  revelation  of  the 
facts  in  regard  to  college  women,  see  Popenoe  and  John- 
son's "Applied  Eugenics,"  chap.  XII.  Professor  Karl 
Pearson  has  shown  that  the  most  prolific  quarter  of  the 
population  in  Great  Britain  produces  50  per  cent  of  the 
children  of  each  generation.  It  is  in  the  highest  degree 
probable  that  this  one-quarter  belongs  almost  wholly  to 
the  right  or  inferior  end  of  the  curve. 

In  an  article  in  the  volume  "Heredity  and  Eugenics" 
(Chicago,  1913)  Doctor  C.  B.  Davenport,  one  of  the 
highest  authorities  on  these  matters,  gives  us  the  follow- 
ing interesting  calculation.  Writing  of  the  graduates  of 
Harvard  College,  he  states:  "At  the  present  rate  [of  repro- 
duction] 1,000  graduates  of  to-day  will  have  only  50 
descendants  200  years  hence.     On  the  other  hand,  recent 


INTERNAL  SUBSTITUTIONS  165 

ccssive  generation.^  And  this  is  probably  true  of 
moral  qualities,  as  well  as  of  intellectual  stature. 
If  the  time  should  come  when  your  A  and  B  men 
together  are  no  more  than  one  per  cent,  or  a  mere 
fraction  of  one  per  cent,  of  the  population — what 
will  become  of  your  civilization? 
Let  me  state  the  case  more  concretely,  in  rela- 

immigrants  and  the  less  effective  descendants  of  the  earlier 
immigrants  still  continue  to  have  large  families,  so  that 
from  1,000  Roumanians  to-day  in  Boston,  at  the  present 
rate  of  breeding,  will  come  100,000"  after  the  same  space 
of  time,  namely,  200  years.  Blind  optimists,  confronted 
with  the  facts  of  the  dying  out  of  the  old  American  stocks, 
are  apt  to  remark  that  the  rate  of  reproduction  of  the  new 
immigrants  will  also  decUne.  This  is  probably  true  of 
those  among  them  who  have  the  moral  and  intellectual 
capacity  to  climb  the  social  ladder;  but  that  is  not  a  con- 
soling reflection.  Substitute  for  the  1,000  Roumanians 
of  the  foregoing  calculation  1,000  mental  defectives  (and 
these  are  only  a  small  fraction  of  the  total  number  in  the 
Boston  area)  and  you  have  a  more  exact  picture  of  the 
present  tendency  of  change  in  the  population.  For  the 
mental  defectives  are,  it  appears,  the  most  persistently 
prolific  class  of  the  population,  so  long  as  they  are  left  at 
liberty  to  do  as  they  please. 

1  Since  it  has  been  shown  that  actual  mental  defectives 
are  the  most  prolific  part  of  the  population,  it  is  of  some 
interest  to  estimate  their  numbers.  Authorities  give  va- 
rious estimates;  for  the  class  is  not  yet  defined  in  any 
generally  accepted  manner.  Most  authorities  seem  to 
estimate  them  as  above  2  per  cent  of  the  population  in 


i66         THE  MEDICAL  PROFESSION 

tion  to  one  of  the  great  essential  professions  of 
which  I  have  some  inside  knowledge,  namely  the 
medical  profession.  Two  hundred  or  one  hun- 
dred years  ago,  the  knowledge  to  be  acquired  by 
the  medical  student,  before  entering  upon  the 
practice  of  his  profession,  was  a  comparatively 
small  body  of  empirical  rules.  The  advance  of 
civilization  has  enormously  multiplied  this  knowl- 
edge; and  the  very  existence  of  our  civilized  com- 
munities depends  upon  the  continued  and  effec- 
tive application  of  this  vast  body  of  medical  art 
and  science.  The  acquiring  and  the  judicious 
application  of  this  mass  of  knowledge  make  very 
much  greater  demands  upon  the  would-be  prac- 
titioner than  did  the  mastery  of  the  body  of  rules 
of  our  forefathers.  Accordingly,  the  length  of 
the  curriculum  prescribed  for  our  medical  stu- 

this  country.  Goddard,  the  highest  authority  in  the 
matter,  says:  "It  is  a  conservative  estimate  to  declare 
that  2  per  cent  of  pubHc-school  children  are  distinctly 
feeble-minded;  .  .  .  the  most  extensive  study  ...  of  an 
entire  school  system  of  2,000  has  shown  that  2  per  cent 
of  such  children  are  so  mentally  defective  as  to  preclude 
any  possibiUty  of  their  ever  being  made  normal  and  able 
to  take  care  of  themselves  as  adults."  Others  have  esti- 
mated the  feeble-minded  in  the  schools  as  high  as  4  per 
cent.  To  these  have  to  be  added  the  declared  defectives 
who  are  not  sent  to  the  public  schools. 


MEDICAL  EFFICIENCY  167 

dents  has  constantly  been  dra\^^l  out,  till  now  its 
duration  is  some  six  years  of  post-graduate  study. 

The  students  who  enter  upon  this  long  and 
severe  course  of  study  are  already  a  selected  body; 
they  have  passed  through  high  school  and  college 
successfully.  We  may  fairly  assume  that  the 
great  majority  of  them  belong  to  the  A  or  B  or 
at  least  the  C  +  group  in  the  army  scale  of  in- 
telligence.^ 

What  proportion  of  them,  do  you  suppose,  prove 
capable  of  assimilating  the  vast  body  of  medical 
knowledge  to  the  point  that  renders  them  capable 
of  applying  it  intelligently  and  effectively?  If  I 
may  venture  to  generaUze  from  my  own  experi- 
ence, I  would  say  that  a  very  considerable  propor- 
tion, even  of  those  who  pass  their  examinations, 
fails  to  achieve  such  effective  assimilation.  The 
bulk  of  modern  medical  knowledge  is  too  vast  for 
their  capacity  of  assimilation,  its  complexity  too 
great  for  their  power  of  understanding.  Yet 
medical  science  continues  to  grow  in  bulk  and 
complexity,  and  the  dependence  of  the  commu- 
nity upon  it  becomes  ever  more  intimate;  for  the 
natural  resistance  of  the  population  to  disease  de- 


1  Or  to  Professor  Terman's  groups  of  superior  and  very 
superior  intelligence. 


i68  THE  PRESENT  SITUATION 

dines,  in  proportion  as  the  population  is  effectively 
protected  by  medical  science  from  the  selective 
action  of  diseases. 

In  this  one  profession,  then,  which  makes  such 
great  and  increasing  demands  on  both  the  intel- 
lectual and  the  moral  qualities  of  its  members,  the 
demand  for  A  and  B  men  steadily  increases;  and 
the  supply  in  all  probability  is  steadily  diminish- 
ing with  each  generation. 

And  what  is  taking  place  in  this  one  profession 
is,  it  would  seem,  taking  place  in  all  the  great 
professions  and  higher  callings.  Our  civilization, 
by  reason  of  its  increasing  complexity,  is  making 
constantly  increasing  demands  upon  the  qualities  of 
its  hearers ;  the  qualities  of  those  hearers  are  dimin- 
ishing or  deteriorating,  rather  than  improving. 

If  we  turn  now  to  consider  very  briefly  the  his- 
tory of  the  great  peoples  of  the  past,  we  find  evi- 
dence which  bears  out  my  main  thesis,  which  goes 
far  to  substantiate  the  explanation  of  the  Parab- 
ola of  Peoples  suggested  in  these  lectures. 

The  most  glorious  civilization  of  the  past  was 
that  of  ancient  Greece.  We  do  not  know  the 
ethnic  composition  of  the  people  which  produced 
that  civilization.    It  is  still  a  matter  of  dispute.^ 

*  It  has  been  maintained  by  many  that  it  was  predomi- 
nantly Nordic.    The  most  probable  view  seems  to  be 


THE  HELLENIC  COLLAPSE  169 

But  we  do  know  that  the  present  population  of 
Greece  is  in  the  main  of  different  stock. ^  And 
history  shows  that  the  change  or  substitution  of 
population  took  place  about  the  time  of  the 
decay  of  that  civilization.  The  causes  of  this 
disaster  were  many.  There  was  the  psycho- 
logical infertility  of  the  selected  classes,  with  the 
decay  of  marriage  and  family  life.  There  was 
exile  and  colonization,  both  on  a  great  scale;  and 
there  was  almost  perpetual  warfare,  largely  of 
Greek  against  Greek;  all  tending  strongly  to  the 
elimination  of  the  most  fit.  There  was  finally, 
and  on  a  great  scale,  exportation  of  Greeks  by 
their  Roman  conquerors,  as  slaves  to  do  the  clerical 
and  professional  work  of  the  Roman  Empire.  No 
wonder  that  the  collapse  of  that  civilization,  borne 
by  so  small  a  population,  was  sudden  and  complete. 
The  grandeur  that  was  Rome  endured  for  a 

that,  like  the  English,  the  population  of  ancient  Greece 
was,  in  the  main,  a  mixture  and  partial  blend  of  the 
Nordic  and  Mediterranean  races,  enriched  by  the  attrac- 
tion of  many  choice  individuals  from  surrounding  coun- 
tries. 

^Ripley  ("Races  of  Europe,"  p.  407)  shows  that, 
whereas  the  ancient  Greeks  were  (statistically)  long- 
headed, the  modern  population  is  predominantly  short- 
headed,  presumably  owing  to  the  predominance  of  Slavic 
blood. 


I70  THE  ROMAN  DECAY 

longer  space.  For  it  was  founded  upon  a  broader 
basis  of  population.  During  some  centuries  the 
Roman  Empire  drew  into  its  service  the  best 
energies  and  talents  of  all  the  populations  of 
Europe.  Common  soldiers  from  remote  prov- 
inces rose  to  be  emperors  or  governors;  slaves  im- 
ported from  afar  became  secretaries  of  state  and 
skilled  administrators.  The  whole  Empire  was 
one  great  vortex,  sweeping  to  its  centre  the  best 
talents  of  the  civilized  world.  All  roads  led  toward 
Rome.  And  the  rule  of  the  infertiHty  of  the 
selected  classes  prevailed.  Marriage  became  un- 
fashionable, children  were  regarded  as  a  burden. 
Pleasure,  luxury,  and  the  production  of  elegant 
Latin  verse  became  the  leading  preoccupations  of 
the  selected  classes.  The  Church,  with  her  advo- 
cacy of  celibacy  and  her  doctrine  that  it  is  better 
to  marry  than  to  burn,  lent  her  powerful  aid.  For 
many  generations  the  process  went  on,  the  process 
of  the  extermination  of  the  most  valuable  strains; 
in  Otto  Seeck's  expressive  phrase,  the  process  of 
the  '^Ausrottung  der  Besten."^  The  mistress  of 
the  world  reached  the  climax  of  her  parabola  and 
rapidly  declined;  and  the  chaos  of  the  early  mid- 
dle ages  succeeded. 

1  "  Geschichte  des  Untergangs  der  Antiken  Welt."     See 
-  also  Professor  J.  L.  Myres,  ''Changes  of  Population  in  the 
Classical  World,"  Eugenic  Review,  1917.] 


SPAIN  AND   GERMANY  171 

The  next  great  empire  comparable  to  Rome's 
was  that  of  Spain — a  wonderful  and  brilliant  ca- 
reer, but  of  short  duration.  The  expulsion  of  the 
Moors  and  of  the  Jews,  the  work  of  the  Inquisi- 
tion, the  celibacy  of  the  Church,  perpetual  war- 
fare, the  drain  of  a  vast  colonial  empire,  and  the 
luxury  and  wealth  derived  from  it — all  these  com- 
bined to  sap  away  the  strains  of  finest  quaHty; 
and  the  power  and  glory  of  Spain  rapidly  decHned. 
France  and  England  took  up  the  struggle  and 
fought  for  the  mastery  of  the  world. 

Germany,  coming  relatively  late  under  the  dev- 
astating influences  of  our  industrial  civiUzation, 
has  made  her  bid  for  world  domination  and  has 
failed;  and,  incidentally,  has  left  the  battle-fields 
of  Europe  and  the  Near  East  strewn  with  the 
corpses  of  the  best  and  bravest  of  our  young  men : 
brilliant  young  poets  and  scientists,  inventors  and 
authors  and  administrators,  by  the  score  and  by 
the  hundred  are  lying  there,  without  descendants 
to  perpetuate  their  talents,  leaving  the  world 
forever  poorer  and  the  peoples  of  Europe  dimin- 
ished in  moral  and  intellectual  stature  for  all 
time. 

Westward  the  march  of  empire  takes  its  way, 
throwing  out  before  it  a  vanguard  of  pioneers,  of 
its  best  and  brightest  and  most  vigorous.     Al- 


172  THE  AMERICAN   CURVE 

ready  the  centre  of  gravity,  of  power,  has  passed 
by  these  Eastern  States  of  America.  The  Middle 
West  is  already  claiming  predominance;  and  the 
day  of  the  Far  West  is  at  hand.  And  after  that — 
what? 

The  process  has  acquired  a  frightful  rapidity 
and  momentum.  Every  feature  of  your  Ameri- 
can civilization  seems  to  conspire  for  its  accelera- 
tion, for  the  more  rapid  attainment  of  the  cHmax 
of  your  curve  and  the  subsequent  decline — every 
feature  save  one  only. 

What  is  this  factor  which  alone  can  secure  your 
future,  and  save  you  as  a  people  from  the  fatal 
decline;  which  may  even  secure  you  a  continued 
progress  in  all  that  makes  the  worth  of  human 
living  ? 

It  is  the  increasing  knowledge  of  human  nature 
and  of  human  society,  and  of  the  conditions 
that  make  for  or  against  the  flourishing  of  human 
nature  and  society.  But  the  mere  increase  of 
such  knowledge  in  scientific  academies  is  of  no 
avail,  if  that  knowledge  is  not  widely  diffused 
among  the  people,  and  if  it  does  not  become  a 
guide  to  action  in  public  and  in  private  life. 

Fortunately,  in  this  country  there  is  widely  dif- 
fused a  belief  in  the  value  of  science  and  of  its 
application  to  human  life.     You  have  many  keen 


THE   NEW  FACTOR  173 

workers  adding  to  the  sum  of  knowledge,  and  you 
have  a  wdde-spread  tendency  to  be  guided  by  it. 
Therein  Ues  your  hope  for  the  future.  Such 
knowledge  is  virtually  a  new  factor  in  history. 
And  the  essential  problem  before  you  is — Can 
you  as  a  nation  so  make  use  of  this  new  factor, 
this  increasing  knowledge  of  human  nature  and 
human  society,  as  to  turn  the  course  of  history? 
Can  you  by  taking  thought  and  action  guided  by 
thought,  can  you  prevent  or  indefinitely  postpone 
that  decline  of  your  curve  of  civilization  which 
seems  even  now  to  threaten  you?  I  firmly  be- 
lieve that  you,  of  all  the  existing  nations,  with  the 
possible  exception  of  Japan,  have  the  best  pros- 
pect of  achieving  this  mastery  of  your  fate.  W^at 
steps  you  will  take;  what  changes  of  law,  of  social 
organization,  of  domestic  institutions,  you  \^all, 
upon  mature  consideration,  institute,  I  do  not 
know  and  I  do  not  suggest.  To  make  any  such 
suggestions  is  no  part  of  my  task  in  this  short 
study.  It  is  enough,  if  I  have  directed  your  atten- 
tion to  this  supremely  important  problem;  if  I 
have  led  you  to  see  that  every  wide  measure  of 
social  legislation,  every  social  custom  and  insti- 
tution, should  be  judged  and  evaluated  with  ref- 
erence to  its  bearing  upon  this  problem — its  prob- 
able effect  on  the  anthropologic  constitution  of 


174     THE   CITIZEN'S  RESPONSIBILITY 

the  nation  and  the  sum  of  its  human  qualities. 
All  such  laws  and  customs  and  institutions  have 
their  inevitable  effects  of  this  all-important  kind. 
The  laws  regulating  the  sale  of  alcohol;  the  immi- 
gration laws;  the  laws  of  marriage  and  divorce; 
the  educational  system;  the  relations  of  labor  to 
capital;  the  nature  and  degree  of  state-interference 
with  personal  liberty;  the  distribution  of  the 
population  in  town  and  village;  the  size  and  type 
of  your  cities — all  these  are  but  a  few  instances  of 
influences  capable  of  exerting  subtle  but  profound 
effects  upon  the  quality  of  the  population  of  these 
United  States  of  America. 

But  most  important  of  all  is  the  diffusion  of  the 
sense  of  individual  responsibihty  in  this  matter; 
the  clear  realization  that,  in  the  last  resort,  the 
future  will  be  the  creation  of  the  present,  that  the 
nation  of  the  future  must  issue  from  the  individual 
choice  and  action  of  those  who  now  compose  it. 


APPENDICES 


APPENDIX  I 

COMMENTARY    ON    THE    PROPOSITION  THAT    ALL  MEN  ARE    BORN  WITH 

EQUAL    CAPACITIES    FOR    MORAL   AND    INTELLECTUAL 

DEVELOPMENT 

PORTRAITS  OF  THREE  MEN  ALL  OF  WHOM  IN  THEIR 

YOUTH     WERE     DENIED    THE    ADVANTAGES 

OF  SCHOOLING  AND  THE  REFINEMENTS 

OF  CIVILIZATION 


This  man,  by  virtue  of  his  qualities  of  character  and  intellect, 
rose  from  a  very  humble  station  to  a  position  of  the  highest  re- 
sponsibility and  power.  He  so  filled  that  position  as  to  gain  the 
unbounded  admiration  of  all  men  and  of  all  nations. 


ALL   MEN   ARE   CREATED    EQUAL       179 


This  man,  my  friend  Tama  Bulan,  was  the  chief  of  a  small  village 
in  the  heart  of  Borneo.  He  and  his  people  belonged  to  one  of  the 
tribes  which  have  often  been  described  as  degraded  savages,  stigma- 
tized as  head-hunters,  and  erroneously  stated  to  be  cannibals.  By 
reason  of  his  high  intelligence,  his  humane  feeling,  his  firmness  of 
character,  and  statesmanlike  foresight,  he  acquired  a  great  moral  in- 
fluence not  only  over  the  people  of  his  own  village  and  tribe,  but 
over  many  of  the  other  tribes  throughout  a  large  area.  He  used 
this  influence  to  bring  to  an  end  the  chronic  tribal  warfare  which 
in  all  that  region  of  the  earth  had  long  prevailed.  By  his  influence 
and  example  he  brought  peace,  happiness,  and  prosperity  to  many 
thousands  of  his  fellow  men.  Some  account  of  him  and  his  people 
may  be  found  in  "The  Pagan  Tribes  of  Borneo,"  by  Charles  Hose 
and  Wm.  McDougall  (London,  1912). 


ALL    MEN   ARE    CREATED    EQUAL        i8i 


This  man  remained  unknown  to  fame,  until  he  was  photographed 
by  the  authors  of  a  recently  published  book^  as  a  representative 
specimen  of  the  inferior  type  of  the  Ila-speaking  people. 

We  are  told  nothing  of  his  moral  and  intellectual  qualities;  but 
the  most  resolutely  optimistic  humanitarians  wdll  hardly  claim  him 
as  a  "mute  inglorious  Milton,"  or  even  as  a  "village  Hampden." 
Nor  is  it  easy  to  suppose  that  they  could  contemplate  with  equa- 
nimity the  substitution  of  the  Anglo-American  stock  by  persons  of 
this  type. 

I  "The  Ila-speaking  People  of  Northern  Rhodesia."  by  Rev.  E.  \V.  Smith  and  Captain 
.A.  M.  Dale,  London,  ig^o.     I  am  indebted  to  Mr.  Smith  for  the  copy  of  the  picture. 


ALL   MEN   ARE    CREATED    EQUAL       183 


APPENDIX  II 

Birth-rate  in  the  Social  Strata 

In  Great  Britain  little  has  been  done  in  the  way  of 
anthropometric  survey  by  the  methods  of  mental 
measurement.  But  there  has  recently  been  published 
a  survey,  by  the  method  of  personal  interview  and 
estimation,  of  a  large  sample  of  the  *' manual  workers" 
of  Sheffield  (''The  Equipment  of  the  Workers/'  Lon- 
don, 1919).  Sheffield  is  a  typical  manufacturing 
town  of  some  half -million  inhabitants,  seated  in  York- 
shire, near  the  border  of  Lancashire;  these  two  coun- 
ties are  noted  for  the  vigor  and  achievement  of  many 
of  their  sons  and  daughters.  The  investigation  dealt 
with  866  men  and  women  in  equal  numbers.  They 
were  divided  into  three  classes :  A,  the  well-equipped ; 
B,  the  inadequately  equipped;  C,  the  mal-equipped. 
Class  A  consists  of  men  and  women  who,  as  judged 
by  personal  impression,  by  their  mode  of  life  and 
history,  seem  to  be  of  character  (often  of  fine  charac- 
ter) and  abilities  such  as  enable  them  to  cope  with 
the  problems  of  life  in  a  satisfactory  manner.  Their 
personalities  and  life-histories  may  be  contemplated 
with  satisfaction,  entire  sympathy,  and  considerable 
admiration.  If  these  were  a  fair  sample  of  the  "  man- 
ual workers"  of  the  whole  country,  Britain  would  be, 
indeed,  a  great  and  happy  land.  But,  unfortunately, 
they  constitute  less  than  one-fourth  of  the  whole 
group  (about  22  per  cent). 

185 


i86    BIRTH-RATE  IN  THE  SOCIAL  STRATA 

Class  C  constitutes  one-fourteenth  of  the  whole. 
They  are  a  bad  lot.  ^'In  stupidity  or  in  ignorance  or 
in  base  cleverness,  those  in  this  class  live  for  ends  of 
their  own,  in  vicious  ways  that  pollute  the  lives  of 
others.  From  their  loins  come  the  intellectually  fee- 
ble and  the  morally  depraved  children  that  sap  all 
the  best  energies  of  the  school-mistress." 

Class  B  comprises  all  who  fall  between  the  levels  of 
classes  A  and  C.  "These,  in  their  scores  of  thousands 
in  Sheffield,  and  in  their  millions  upon  millions  in  the 
whole  country,  are  the  real  ^masses,'  the  real  *poor,' 
the  real  'people.'  .  .  .  They  manage  to  live  their 
own  lives  and  to  keep  quite  as  free  as  the  average 
member  of  the  well-to-do  classes  from  vice  and  crime. 
What  distinguishes  them,  or  'indistinguishes'  them, 
so  to  speak,  is  their  lack  of  positive  qualities  of  any 
kind.  ...  It  is  our  honest  belief  that  neither  the 
man,  nor — still  more  xertainly^he  woman,  in  Class 
II  (i.  e.,  B)  can  in  any  genuine  sense  of  the  word  be 
called  'fit  to  vote.'"  They  form  70  per  cent  of  the 
''manual  workers."  Detailed  notes  on  a  score  of  in- 
dividuals from  each  of  the  classes  A  and  B  are  given, 
these  being  regarded  as  fair  samples  of  the  two  classes. 
A  careful  comparison  of  the  detailed  descriptions  of 
these  samples  from  the  two  classes  points,  I  think, 
clearly  to  the  conclusion  that  the  difference  between 
Classes  A  and  B  is  in  the  main  one  of  intrinsic  or  in- 
nate quality,  and  cannot  be  ascribed  to  differences  of 
training  or  educational  opportunity.  None  of  Class  A 
(with  one  doubtful  exception)  had  attended  school  be- 
yond the  fourteenth  year;  several  of  them  are  described 


BIRTH-RATE  IN  THE  SOCIAL  STRATA    187 

as  illiterate,  or  ignorant,  or  "never  reads,"  or  "scarcely 
any  education."  The  average  of  schooling  and  home 
training  is  not  appreciably  less  in  Class  B.  Yet  one 
is  made  to  feel  that  the  average  "civic  worth"  of 
Class  A  is  vastly  greater  than  that  of  Class  B.  The 
authors  of  the  volume  imply  (probably  correctly)  that 
the  majority  of  the  members  of  Class  B  might  have 
been  made  into  fairly  satisfactory  citizens,  even  made 
"fit  to  vote,"  if  the  social  and  educational  conditions 
under  which  they  grew  up  had  been  very  much  better 
than  they  actually  were,  if  each  one  had  been  care- 
fully trained  and  fully  educated  in  a  good  school  and 
home,  and  shielded  from  all  degrading  influences.  But 
the  striking  fact  remains  that,  of  the  "manual  work- 
ers" of  this  representative  group,  nearly  one-quarter 
grew  to  be  good  citizens,  in  spite  of  many  adverse 
circumstances,  while  three-quarters  of  them  failed  so 
to  grow.  Would  it  not  make  a  vast  difference  to  the 
future  of  Britain,  to  the  welfare  and  happiness  of  the 
whole  population,  and  to  the  political  stability,  wis- 
dom, and  beneficent  world-influence  of  the  country,  if 
the  next  generation  of  "manual  workers"  could  come 
wholly  from  the  loins  of  Class  A.  As  the  writers 
point  out,  the  elimination  of  the  relatively  small 
Class  C  would  bring  the  country  in  sight  of  Utopia. 
But  other  investigators  have  made  it  appear  only 
too  probable  that  Class  C  is  the  most  prolific,  and 
Class  A  the  least  prolific,  of  the  three  classes.  Thus 
it  has  been  shown  that  the  birth-rate,  among  mem- 
bers of  the  Hearts  of  Oak  Benefit  Society,  fell  below 
15  per  1,000,  while  that  of  the  population  at  large 


i88    BIRTH-RATE  IN  THE  SOCIAL  STRATA 

remained  a  little  above  30  per  1,000  (Chappie's  ^'Fer- 
tility of  the  Unfit").  Now  the  members  of  the 
Hearts  of  Oak  Society  are  in  the  main  the  pick  of  the 
"manual  workers,"  just  such  persons  as  make  up 
the  Class  A  of  the  Sheffield  "manual  workers." 

A  strong  inverse  correlation  of  the  birth-rate  with 
social  status  seems  to  be  general  throughout  the 
European  nations.  The  proof  of  it  in  Great  Britain 
and  in  the  United  States  of  America  is  overwhelm- 
ingly strong.  Karl  Pearson  and  his  associates  have 
proved  it  for  London  beyond  question;  especially 
David  Heron  ("On  the  Relation  of  Fertility  in  Men 
to  Social  Status,"  London,  1906)  and  Newsholme 
and  Stevenson  ("The  Decline  of  Human  Fertility," 
London,  1906).  The  last-named  authors  sum  up  by 
saying:  "The  figures  show  in  a  manner  which  hardly 
admits  of  any  doubt  that  in  London  at  any  rate  the 
inhabitants  of  the  poorest  quarters — over  a  million 
in  number — are  reproducing  themselves  at  a  much 
greater  rate  than  the  more  well-to-do."  A  similar 
state  of  affairs  was  shown  to  obtain  before  the  war 
in  Holland,  in  Berlin,  and  in  Vienna.  In  America 
the  evidence  is  not  so  complete.  But  similar  facts 
have  been  demonstrated  for  Pittsburgh.  In  that  city 
"Ward  7  has  the  lowest  birth-rate  and  the  lowest 
rate  of  net  increase  of  any  ward  in  the  city.  With 
this  may  be  contrasted  the  Sixth  Ward.  .  .  .  Nearly 
3,000  of  its  14,817  males  of  voting  age  are  illiterate. 
Its  death-rate  is  the  highest  in  the  city.  Almost 
nine-tenths  of  its  residents  are  either  foreigners  or 
the  children  of  foreigners.     Its  birth-rate  is  three  times 


BIRTH-RATE  IN  THE  SOCIAL  STRATA    189 

that  of  the  Seventh  Ward.  Taking  into  account  all  the 
wards  of  the  city,  it  is  found  that  the  birth-rate  rises 
as  one  considers  the  wards  which  are  marked  by  a 
large  foreign  population,  illiteracy,  poverty,  and  a 
high  death-rate.  .  .  .  The  correlation  between  illit- 
eracy and  net  increase  is  +  .731.  The  net  increase 
of  Pittsburgh's  population,  therefore,  is  greatest 
where  the  percentage  of  foreign-born  and  of  illiterates 
is  greatest.  .  .  .  Pittsburgh,  like  probably  all  large 
cities  in  civilized  countries,  breeds  from  the  bottom. 
The  lower  a  class  is  in  the  scale  of  intelligence,  the 
greater  is  its  reproductive  contribution."  (P.  Popenoe 
and  R.  H.  Johnson,  "Applied  Eugenics,"  New  York, 
1918,  p.  138.) 

The  fact  of  the  greater  rate  of  increase  of  the  poorer 
classes  (or,  more  generally,  the  inverse  correlation  of 
fertility  with  good  social  status)  is  abundantly  estab- 
lished; it  cannot  be  denied  by  our  resolute  optimists 
and  fatuously  complacent  editors.  When  these  peo- 
ple condescend  to  consider  this  fact,  they  usually  take 
the  line  that  "one  man  is  as  good  as  another,  and 
sometimes  a  good  deal  better,  too."  They  deny  that 
there  is  any  correlation  between  position  in  the  social 
scale  and  intrinsic  or  native  worth.  It  may  be  hoped 
that  the  facts  of  correlation  of  intelligence  with  social 
status,  recited  in  the  pages  of  this  book,  may  lead  such 
persons  to  consider  the  problem  more  seriously.  But 
we  need  more  evidence  on  the  point. ^     It  is  much  to 

^  The  last  resort  of  those  who  are  unwilling  to  accept 
the  evidence  of  positive  correlation  between  intelligence 


igo    BIRTH-RATE  IN  THE  SOCIAL  STRATA 

be  regretted  that  the  Sheffield  investigators  seem  to 
have  paid  no  attention  to  the  question  of  the  birth- 
rate among  their  three  classes.     Children  are  men- 

and  good  social  status  is  to  assert  that  the  children  of  the 
better  social  classes  are  stimulated  to  more  rapid  intellec- 
tual development  in  their  earliest  years  by  contact  with 
their  more  intellectual  parents.  This  explanation  has 
been  fully  considered  and  rejected  by  the  workers  who 
have  obtained  the  evidence.  I  will  merely  point  out  here 
how  little  ground  there  is  for  this  assumption.  The  chil- 
dren of  the  better  social  classes,  especially  perhaps  in 
England,  too  often  spend  most  of  the  waking  hours  of 
their  early  years  shut  away  in  a  nursery,  with  little  or  no 
companionship  beyond  that  of  a  dull  nurse-maid,  or  sitting 
solemnly  in  a  baby-cart  which  is  pushed  round  and  round 
some  public  park.  The  children  of  the  poor  enjoy  in  the 
main  far  more  companionship,  both  childish  and  adult, 
have  more  stimulating  contacts,  are  thrown  more  upon 
their  own  resources,  and  are  much  less  inhibited  and  re- 
pressed. In  consequence,  they  are  notoriously  precocious 
and  sharp-witted  in  their  early  years;  the  London  gamin  is 
celebrated  in  this  respect.  The  life  of  the  street  and  the 
gutter  may  have  many  dangers,  moral  and  physical,  but 
it  is  at  least  stimulating.  As  Mrs.  Dewey,  a  high  educa- 
tional authority,  says  in  a  recent  article:  "Not  the  least 
advantage  of  being  born  poor  is  the  opportunity  it  offers 
for  getting  real  experience  in  childhood"  {The  NatioUy 
No.  2913).  Perhaps  no  one  but  a  parent  who  has  lived 
intimately  with  his  children,  striving  day  by  day  and 
night  by  night  to  promote  their  development,  can  fully 
realize  how  refractory  is  the  natural  process  of  unfolding 
to  all  our  efforts. 


BIRTH-RATE  IN  THE  SOCIAL  STRATA    191 

tioned,  but  the  number  is  not  stated  in  most  cases — 
an  illustration  of  the  blindness  to  this  all-important 
topic  of  so  many  earnest  social  workers. 

Some  years  ago  I  made  a  rough  census  of  the 
families  of  such  of  the  resident  teachers  of  Oxford  as 
were  known  to  me  and  my  collaborators.  This 
group  included  142  members  of  this  highly  intellec- 
tual selected  class  and  may  fairly  be  regarded  as  a 
true  sample.  I  found  that  each  of  these  142  men 
had  on  the  average  1.8  children;  that  is  to  say,  284 
adults  (142  married  couples)  had  261  children.  A 
few  of  these  couples,  being  still  comparatively  young, 
would  produce  more  children;  but  of  the  then  exist- 
ing children  some  would  die  before  becoming  adults. 
These  two  unknown  quantities  are  probably  not  very 
unequal.  In  estimating  the  reproduction  rate  of 
this  highly  selected  class,  we  must  take  into  the 
account  the  fact  of  the  very  large  number  of  bachelors 
within  it,  who,  being  well  advanced  in  years,  are  not 
likely  to  marry.  It  was  easy  to  count  70  elderly 
bachelors,  all  men  of  intellectual  distinction. 


APPENDIX  III 

The  New  Plan 

What  IS  to  be  done  about  it?  That  is  the  urgent 
question  in  the  mind  of  every  serious  man  or  woman 
who  understands  the  facts  and  is  not  utterly  blind  to 
the  teachings  of  history.  Many  social  philosophers 
from  Plato  onward  have  advocated  measures  for  the 
preservation  or  improvement  of  racial  qualities. 
Some  of  these,  including  Plato's  stud-stable  method 
and  the  practices  of  infanticide  and  abortion,  which 
were  common  among  the  Spartans  and  other  Greeks, 
cannot  be  approved  or  legally  recognized  to-day  with- 
out grave  danger  of  deterioration  of  our  common 
morality,  without  loss  of  much  of  that  improvement 
of  the  moral  tradition  which  European  civilization 
has  undoubtedly  achieved  in  the  last  two  thousand 
years,  and  which  we  owe  so  largely  to  the  teachings 
of  the  Founder  of  Christianity.  Yet  much  can  be 
done.  Our  aim  in  general  must  be  to  favor  increase 
of  the  birth-rate  among  the  intrinsically  better  part 
of  the  population,  and  its  decrease  among  the  inferior 
part.  The  first  essentials  are  the  further  acquisition 
of  knowledge  of  the  facts  and  principles  involved,  a 
wide  diffusion  of  such  knowledge,  and  the  building 
up  of  a  strong  public  opinion.  The  second  and  third 
are  now  more  important  than  the  first;  for,  though 

192 


THE  NEW  PLAN  193 

more  exact  knowledge  is  desirable,  we  have  sufficient 
to  serve  for  sure  general  guidance.^ 

The  firm  and  sufficient  basis  of  the  demand  for 
eugenic  measures  is  the  long-recognized  fact  that 
you  may  not  expect  to  gather  figs  from  thistles  or 
grapes  from  thorns.  More  explicitly  it  may  be  stated 
as  follows:  Human  qualities,  both  mental  and  physi- 
cal, are  hereditary;  and  any  human  stock  is  capable 
of  being  improved  by  training  and  education,  by  good 
environmental  influences,  very  slowly  only,  if  at  all, 
and  probably  not  at  all.  Human  beings,  far  from 
being  bom  with  equal  potentialities  of  moral  and  intel- 
lectual development,  inherit  these  in  very  different  de- 
grees. Any  population  may  in  principle  be  regarded 
as  consisting  of  two  halves;  the  half  made  up  of  all  in- 
dividuals the  sima  of  whose  innate  qualities  or  poten- 
tialities is  above  the  average  or  mean  value,  and  the 

^  Messrs.  Popenoe  and  Johnson  say:  "The  basal  differ- 
ences in  the  mental  traits  of  man  (and  the  physical  as 
well,  of  course)  are  known  to  be  due  to  heredity,  and  little 
modified  by  training.  It  is  therefore  possible  to  raise  the 
level  of  the  human  race — the  task  of  eugenics — by  getting 
that  half  of  the  race  which  is,  on  the  whole,  superior  in 
the  traits  that  make  for  human  progress  and  happiness, 
to  contribute  a  larger  proportion  to  the  next  generation 
than  does  the  half  which  is  on  the  whole  inferior  in  that 
respect.  Eugenics  need  know  nothing  more,  and  the 
smoke  of  controversy  over  the  exact  way  in  which  some 
trait  or  other  is  inherited  must  not  be  allowed  for  an 
instant  to  obscure  the  known  fact  that  the  level  can  be 
raised."       {Op.  cit.,  p.  114.) 


194  THE  NEW  PLAN 

other  half  made  up  of  individuals  the  sum  of  whose 
qualities  is  below  the  mean  value.  If  these  two  halves 
have  persistently  unequal  birth-rates  (and  the  differ- 
ence of  birth-rates  is  not  compensated  by  an  equal 
difference  in  their  death-rates),  that  population  will 
undergo  a  change  of  quality;  and  a  small  difference  of 
birth-rate  is  capable  of  producing  a  surprisingly  large 
change  of  quality  in  the  course  of  a  few  generations. 
We  have  overwhelmingly  strong  grounds  for  believing 
that  in  this  country  (and  in  almost  all  the  countries 
of  Western  civilization)  the  birth-rate  of  the  inferior 
half  of  the  population  is  very  considerably  greater 
than  that  of  the  superior  half;  and  this  greater  birth- 
rate is  only  very  partially  compensated  by  a  higher 
death-rate.  The  problem  of  eugenics  is  to  equalize 
the  birth-rate  of  the  two  halves  (while  all  efforts  to 
reduce  to  a  minimum  the  death-rate  of  both  halves 
are  continued),  or,  if  possible,  to  reverse  the  prevail- 
ing tendency  and  to  secure,  in  the  superior  half  of  the 
population,  a  higher  birth-rate  than  that  of  the  in- 
ferior half.  If  the  present  state  of  affairs  shall  con- 
tinue, the  civilization  of  America  is  doomed  to  rapid 
decay.  If  equalization  of  the  birth-rate  of  the  two 
halves  can  be  brought  about,  the  country  may  face 
the  future  with  some  hope  of  continued  prosperity. 
If  the  present  tendency  can  be  reversed,  and  the  birth- 
rate of  the  superior  half  be  maintained  at  a  higher 
rate  than  that  of  the  inferior  half,  then,  even  though 
the  difference  be  but  slight,  the  American  people  may 
face  the  future  with  a  well-grounded  hope  that  they 
are  building  up  the  greatest  nation  and  the  most 


THE  NEW  PLAN  195 

glorious  civilization  that  the  world  has  ever  seen,  a 
nation  capable  of  assuming  the  leadership  of  the  world 
and  of  securing  the  reign  of  justice,  freedom,  and 
kindness  throughout  every  land.^ 

The  knowledge  we  have  amply  justifies  the  eugenic 
demand;  the  facts  are  becoming,  and  will  become, 
more  and  more  widely  appreciated;  a  strong  public 
opinion  is  being  created.  But  given  the  diffusion  of 
such  knowledge  and  such  public  opinion,  how  shall 
they  be  applied  to  secure  the  desired  effects?  It  is 
now  generally  agreed  that  the  reproduction  of  the 
least  fit,  especially  of  those  persons  who  are  indis- 
putably feeble-minded,  should  be  prevented.  Public 
opinion  is  already  aroused  on  this  matter;  some  steps 
have  been  taken,  and  others  will  follow.  There  is 
good  ground  for  hope  that  within  a  few  decades  all 
the  United  States  of  America  will  effectively  deal  with 
this  most  immediately  urgent  evil,  the  high  birth-rate 
of  the  admittedly  and  grossly  unfit.  It  is  needless  to 
argue  here  the  relative  advantages  of  sterilization 
and  institutional  segregation.  Probably  both  meth- 
ods will  be  used. 

^  I  leave  out  of  account  in  this  summary  statement  the 
effects  of  immigration.  Public  opinion  on  that  matter  is 
already  strongly  aroused;  the  bearing  and  importance  of 
the  immigration  problem  are  so  obvious  that  it  is  incredi- 
ble the  American  people  should  remain  indifferent  and 
inert  in  face  of  it,  and  should  not  take  very  soon  the 
strictest  measures  to  prevent  the  immigration  of  all  but 
those  persons  who  are  in  every  way  well  fitted  to  become 
good  American  citizens  in  the  fullest  sense  of  the  words. 


196  THE  NEW  PLAN 

But  such  measures,  though  they  will  immediately 
obviate  a  large  amount  of  human  suffering  and  will 
effect  a  great  public  economy,  will  postpone  only  a  lit- 
tle the  deterioration  of  quality  which  threatens  the 
whole  nation  with  decay.  Some  writers  on  this  topic 
{e.  g.,  Professor  Knight  Dunlap  in  his  "Personal  Beauty 
and  Race  Betterment")  have  expressed  the  hope  that 
the  wider  diffusion  of  knowledge  of  methods  of  birth- 
control  (the  contra-ceptive  methods)  will  have  a  very 
beneficial  effect.  Up  to  the  present,  such  knowledge, 
diffusing  itself  downward  through  the  social  strata, 
seems  to  have  diminished  very  markedly  the  repro- 
duction of  that  part  of  the  population  (amounting 
perhaps  nearly  to  one-half  of  it)  which  is  above  the 
average  (statistically)  in  native  qualities;  so  that  its 
effects  hitherto  have  been  gravely  dysgenic  or  racially 
detrimental.  Further  diffusion  may  partially  rectify 
this  dysgenic  influence;  but  it  seems  highly  improb- 
able that  it  can,  of  itself,  ever  completely  neutralize 
it;  it  is  still  more  improbable  that  such  knowledge  will 
ever  operate  as  a  positively  eugenic  influence. 

Professor  Dunlap  is  optimistic  enough  to  suppose 
that  the  further  diffusion  of  this  knowledge  will  solve 
the  "Negro  problem"  of  America.  It  is  to  be  feared 
that  it  will  have,  among  the  colored  people,  only  the 
positively  dysgenic  effects  which  it  already  produces 
on  so  great  a  scale  in  the  white  population;  that  among 
both  white  and  colored  people  it  will  be  put  into 
practice  only  by  the  more  far-sighted,  prudent,  and 
self-controlled;  while  the  most  ignorant,  careless,  and 
improvident  will  continue  to  behave  as  they  always 
have  behaved. 


THE  NEW  PLAN  197 

Something  may  be  hoped  from  the  influence  upon 
individual  conduct  of  an  enlightened  public  opinion 
and  sentiment.  But,  again,  it  seems  highly  improb- 
able that  this  factor  alone,  or  in  conjunction  with  the 
one  last  considered,  will  ever  suffice  to  reverse  or  even 
to  arrest  the  process  of  deterioration.^  There  can  be 
little  doubt  that  the  economic  factor  is  of  dominant 
importance  in  determining  the  rate  of  reproduction 
in  all  classes  but  the  very  poorest  and  the  very  rich- 
est. The  outstanding  fact  of  our  present  civilization 
is  that  the  vast  majority  of  men  and  women  are  striv- 
ing to  rise,  or  to  maintain  themselves,  in  the  social  and 
economic  scale,  and  that  the  addition  of  each  child  to 
a  family  is  a  very  serious  handicap,  a  great  additional 
weight,  to  be  borne  by  the  parents  who  are  engaged  in 
this  struggle.  The  acute  realization  of  this  fact  is 
the  principal  ground  of  the  restriction  of  the  birth- 
rate in  recent  times  among  those  who  have  succeeded 
in  risLQg  above  the  lower  social  levels.  If  this  be 
admitted,  and  I  do  not  think  it  is  seriously  questioned 
by  any  one  who  is  competent  to  form  an  opinion 
in  the  matter,  it  follows  that  we  must  look  to  some 
readjustment  of  family  incomes  as  the  chief  eugenic 
measure  of  the  future.  It  may  be  remarked  that 
no  general  raising  of  the  level  of  prosperity  and  of 
the  standard  of  living  is  likely  to  have  the  desired 
effect  in  any  appreciable  degree.     For  the  demands 

1  It  is  notorious  that  the  crusade  of  President  Roosevelt 
and  of  many  other  eminent  men  against  "race  suicide" 
seems  to  have  made  no  appreciable  effect. 


198  THE  NEW  PLAN 

of  men  (and  of  women)  for  the  good  things  which 
money  can  secure  are  practically  unlimited;  and  the 
demands  or  desires  for  such  things  of  any  particular 
family  are,  in  the  main,  relative  to  the  standard  set  by 
their  social  equals,  by  the  social  circle  to  which  by 
occupation  and  education  they  belong.  This  stand- 
ard of  demand  at  any  social  level  is  the  product  of  the 
interplay  of  many  factors,  and,  though  it  undergoes 
absolute  and  relative  changes,  it  is  fairly  stable.  In 
the  main  it  corresponds  to  the  purchasing  power  of 
the  remuneration  commonly  received  by  persons  of 
the  average  education  and  abilities  of  the  class  con- 
cerned; and  this  remuneration  tends  in  the  main  to 
be  such  as  will  permit  the  satisfaction  of  the  standard 
demands  of  a  family  of  three  or  four  persons,  that  is, 
a  family  containing  one  or  two  children.  Each  addi- 
tion to  the  family,  beyond  this  minimum  number,  en- 
tails an  inability  to  attain  the  satisfaction  of  the 
standard  demands  of  the  class  to  which  it  belongs, 
entails  the  going  without  some  one  or  more  of  the 
good  things  of  life  which  other  families  of  similar 
social  level  enjoy — it  may  be  domestic  help,  a  piano, 
an  automobile,  college  education  for  the  children, 
foreign  travel,  a  country  house,  etc.,  etc.  Nor  would 
an  absolute  equality  of  income  for  all  families  and 
classes  meet  the  case.  If  that  state  of  affairs  could 
be  maintained,  it  is  clear,  I  think,  that  its  effects 
would  be  positively  dysgenic  in  a  high  degree.  It  is 
equally  clear  that  the  general  indiscriminating  State 
endowment  of  motherhood,  now  called  for  in  so  many 
quarters,  would  have  directly  dysgenic  effects;  and 


THE  NEW  PLAN  199 

it  would  be  disastrous,  in  that  it  would  go  very 
far  to  destroy  the  family  as  an  institution  of  any 
nation  which  should  adopt  this  plan.  All  such 
schemes  should  be  condemned  on  the  general  and 
sufficient  ground  that  the  national  welfare  and  social 
justice  demand  that  each  worker  should  be  remu- 
nerated in  proportion  to  the  value  of  the  services  that 
he  renders  to  the  community.  For  only  in  this  way 
are  men  effectively  stimulated  to  put  forth  their  best 
efforts,  and  to  prepare  themselves  and  their  children 
to  render  the  more  valuable  and  more  arduous  and 
(what  is  in  the  main  the  same  thing)  the  more  intellec- 
tual forms  of  service. 

What  is  required  to  counteract  the  very  powerful 
dysgenic  influence  of  the  economic  consideration,  or 
prudence,  is  that  every  family  which  has  risen  above 
the  mean  social  level  (or,  better  still  perhaps,  every 
family  which  has  any  good  claim  to  belong  to  what 
may  be  called  *^the  selected  classes '')  should  know 
that  the  addition  of  each  child  should  automatically 
bring  with  it  an  increase  of  income  sufficient  to 
meet  the  expenses  normally  incurred  in  the  bringing 
up  of  that  child.  It  is  clear  that,  in  order  to  meet 
this  requirement,  the  amount  of  increase  of  income 
would  have  to  bear  some  given  proportion  to  the  in- 
come already  enjoyed  or  earned.  This  increase  of 
income  should,  I  suggest,  be  not  less  than  one-tenth 
of  the  earned  income,  and  might  well  be  rather  more. 
A  family  earning  an  income  of  $2,000  a  year  would 
then  receive,  for  each  living  child  under  the  age  of 
say  twenty  years,  an  additional  income  of  $200  a 


/^ 


200  THE  NEW  PLAN     ^^ 

year.  If  such  increase  of  income,  proportional  to 
the  earnings  and  to  the  number  of  children,  could  be 
secured  to  each  family  of  the  selected  classes,  the 
eugenic  effect  would,  I  submit,  be  very  great,  far  sur- 
passing in  this  direction  the  effect  of  any  other  eugenic 
measure  that  has  been  proposed;  while  it  would  do 
nothing  to  diminish  the  natural  and  proper  incentives 
to  effort,  and  would  not  in  any  way  tend  to  dimin- 
ish the  sense  of  parental  responsibility  or  to  weaken 
family  ties. 

The  question  arises,  then — Is  there  any  way  in 
which  we  may  hope  to  see  such  an  adjustment  of  in- 
comes brought  about?  In  a  paper  published  many 
years  ago,^  I  suggested  that  the  State  and  the  munici- 
palities, which  employ  a  large  and  constantly  increas- 
ing number  of  selected  servants,  should  introduce  re- 
muneration on  this  plan  into  all  their  services.  I  urged 
that,  if  this  were  done,  public  opinion  would  be  quick 
to  recognize  the  essential  justice,  as  well  as  the  social 
and  eugenic  expediency,  of  the  plan,  and  would  bring 
such  pressure  to  bear  on  all  large  employers  of  skilled 
labor,  that  they  might  be  led  to  follow  suit.  It  is 
interesting  to  note  that,  since  my  suggestion  was  made, 
some  small  steps  have  been  made  in  this  direction; 
though  it  is  clear  that  these  steps  were  due  to  recogni- 
tion of  their  essential  justice,  rather  than  to  considera- 
tion of  their  eugenic  effects;  for  statesmen  remain 

*"A  Practicable  Eugenic  Suggestion,"  a  paper  read 
before  the  British  Sociological  Society  and  published  in 
Sociological  Papers,  vol.  II,  London,  1909. 


THE  NEW  PLAN  201 

absolutely  blind  and  ignorant  in  face  of  the  eugenic 
problem.     I  refer  more  especially  (i)  to  the  small 
remissions  of  income  tax  made  by  the  British  Govern- 
ment on  account  of  children  of  persons  of  small  in- 
comes; (2)  to  the  separation  allowances  paid  to  sol- 
diers by  the  British  and  other  governments  during 
the  war.     In  the  British  army  these  allowances  were 
made  larger  in  proportion  to  the  number  of  children 
and  in  proportion  to  the  rank  and  pay  of  the  soldier; 
so  that  a  sergeant-major,  for  example,  with  a  large 
family  received  a  very  much  larger  pay  than  an  un- 
married private.    This  was  essentially  just,  and  was 
generally  approved;  and  it  was  also  eugenic.^  But 
that  the  eugenic  consideration  played  no  part  m  de- 
termining this  scale  seems  clear  from  the  fact  that 
(until  near  the  end  of  the  war,  when  some  slight 
change  was  made)  the  plan  was  not  applied  to  the 
commissioned  officers.    The  British  Government  thus 
let  slip  an  opportunity  to  put  in  practice  a  eugenic 
measure  of  tremendous  power,  which  would  have 
been  universally  welcomed  and  approved,  and  which 
would  have  done  something  to  compensate  for  the 
terrible  losses  of  human  qualities  which  the  country 
suffered  in  the  war.    For  there,  in  the  commissioned 
ranks,   were  practicaUy  all  the  most  capable  and 
healthy  young  men  of  the  British  Empire,  all  the 
most  desirable  fathers,  selected  from  all  the  manhood 
of  the  Empire  by  the  stringent  tests  of  achievement 
in  the  field  and  success  in  the  officers'  training-schools. 
The  ignorance  and  folly  of  a  government  which  let 
pass  this  opportunity,  while  recognizing  in  its  treat- 


202  THE  NEW  PLAN       ^ 

ment  of  the  non-commissioned  ranks  the  essential 
justice  of  this  plan  of  remuneration,  is  deplorable, 
both  on  account  of  the  grave  injustice  done  to  so 
many  brave  men  and  on  account  of  the  many  fine 
children  they  might  have  fathered  imder  the  plan, 
but  who  were  never  conceived.^  Yet,  in  spite  of  the 
loss  of  this  great  opportunity  and  of  the  official  ignor- 
ing of  the  eugenic  effects  of  remuneration  on  the  new 
plan,  the  fact  that  it  was  applied  throughout  the 
non-commissioned  ranks  is  very  encouraging;  for  it 
constituted  official  recognition  of  the  justice  of  this 
plan  and  familiarized  the  public  with  the  principle. 

I  can  see  no  reason  why,  in  this  and  in  every  civi- 
lized country,  this  new  plan  of  remuneration  should 
not  be  applied  forthwith  to  every  State  and  municipal 
service,  with  great  eugenic  effects.  But  I  recognize 
difficulties  in  the  way  of  supposing  that  the  same 
plan  might  be  imiversally  or  widely  adopted  by  pri- 
vate firms  or  by  public  and  semi-public  corporations 
and  institutions  not  supported  by  taxation.  Let  us 
consider  the  case  of  the  teachers  in  those  educational 
institutions  which  are  not  wholly  supported  by  pub- 
lic funds.  To  make  the  problem  more  concrete,  let 
us  take  the  case  of  the  teachers  in  an  endowed  univer- 
sity, such  as  Harvard  or  Yale,  institutions  which,  next 
to  the  States  and  the  municipalities,  might  be  expected 
to  be  most  readily  moved  by  enlightened  regard  for 

^  There  were  non-commissioned  officers  with  families 
who  refused  to  accept  commissions  because  they  could 
not  afford  to  do  so. 


THE  NEW  PLAN  203 

eugenic  principles.    The  president  has  at  his  disposal 
a  certain  amount  of  income  for  payment  of  salaries. 
He  rightly  desires  to  include  in  the  faculty  the  largest 
possible  number  of  men  of  high  ability  and  achieve- 
ment.   Two  candidates  for  a  post  appear  to  be  equally 
well  qualified ;  but  one  of  them  is  a  bachelor,  or  has  a  small 
family;  the  other,  though  of  the  same  age,  already 
has  a  large  family.    Which  will  the  president  appoint, 
if  the  *'new  plan''  has  been  adopted?    Similar  diffi- 
culties in  the  working  of  the  plan  would  arise  in — and 
would  be  even  more  serious  in — any  corporation  whose 
primary  aim  was  the  making  of  profits.    It  is  perhaps 
hardly  to  be  hoped  that— even  if  the  ''new  plan"  were 
enforced  by  legislation  in  the  public  services,  the 
army,  the  navy,  the  civil  service,  the  municipal  ser- 
vices, and  so  forth— example  and  the  force  of  public 
opinion  could  secure  its  effective  adoption  in  the 
remuneration  of  all  selected  classes  of  workers.    What 
possibilities  of  its  general  adoption  remain?    I  can 
think  of  two  only,  or  rather  two  varieties  of  one 
scheme;  namely,  the  setting  apart  of  a  national  fund 
for  the  supplementing  of  salaries  of  selected  workers 
according  to  the  ''new  plan."    This  national  fund 
might  be  provided  by  taxation;  or  it  might  be  created, 
and  increased  from  time  to  time,  by  the  public  spirit 
and  beneficence  of  rich  men.    We  have  already  seen 
the  late  Andrew  Carnegie  provide  a  pensions  fund  for 
selected  university  professors.    May  we  not  hope  for 
the  realization  of   this   more   far-reaching   scheme, 
which,  from  the  points  of  view  of  both  social  justice 
and  national  welfare,  would  be  so  admirable.    I  can 


204  THE  NEW  PLAN 

think  of  no  other  purpose  to  which  the  rich  man  who 
wishes  to  promote  the  welfare  of  his  kind,  both  in  the 
present  and  for  all  time,  could  so  conj&dently  devote 
his  wealth,  without  risk  of  pauperizing  any  individual, 
or  of  doing  any  social  injury  that  might  offset  the  bene- 
fits he  aimed  to  confer  on  his  fellow  men.  In  order 
to  make  the  '^new  plan"  as  wide  in  its  operation  as  is 
desirable,  a  very  large  sum  would  be  required;  but  in 
the  first  instance  it  might  be  applied  to  some  one 
highly  selected  class,  such  as  the  teachers  in  colleges 
and  universities.  For  not  only  are  such  teachers  in 
the  main  a  very  highly  selected  class,  embodying 
much  of  the  best  human  qualities  of  the  whole  coun- 
try; they  are  also  notoriously  a  class  which  is  restricted 
in  reproduction  by  the  narrowness  of  its  means;  and 
they  are  a  class  whose  remuneration  is  in  the  hands  of 
responsible  governing  bodies,  which  might  be  trusted 
to  administer  with  discretion  and  fairness  any  moneys 
derived  from  *'  the  national  fund  for  the  new  plan. " 
In  view  of  the  difficulty  of  moving  legislatures  to 
action  directed  to  the  good  of  posterity,  it  seems  prob- 
able that  the  best  hope  of  instituting  the  new  plan 
lies  in  the  possibility  of  raising  the  required  national 
fund  by  appeal  to  private  beneficence.  It  might  be 
hoped  that,  if  in  this  way  a  beginning  were  once  made, 
the  State  legislatures  or,  better  still,  the  federal  gov- 
ernment, might  later  be  led  to  appreciate  the  value 
of  the  new  plan,  to  adopt  it  in  the  payment  of  all 
public  servants,  and  to  create  the  large  national  fund 
necessary  for  its  general  application  on  the  widest 
possible  scale. 


THE  NEW  PLAN  205 

If  the  new  plan  were  adopted  in  Great  Britain,  it 
might  save  some  remnants  of  the  old  professional 
class  which,  the  product  of  a  long  process  of  selection, 
has  been  the  repository  of  a  very  large  proportion  of 
the  best  qualities  of  the  British  stock  and  the  source  of 
most  of  the  leaders  in  all  departments  of  the  national 
life.  This  class,  on  which  the  burdens  of  the  war  fell 
more  heavily  than  on  any  other,  is  now  being  rapidly 
taxed  out  of  existence. 


APPENDIX  IV 

Registration  of  Family  Histories 

Although  I  regard  the  "new  plan"  sketched  in 
Appendix  III  as  the  most  important  eugenic  measure 
that  can  be  advocated  with  any  hope  of  success,  I 
recognize  that  we  cannot  afford  to  neglect  any  other 
measure  of  eugenic  tendency;  and  I  propose  here 
another  such  reform  which,  as  public  opinion  becomes 
enlightened,  might  be  of  great  value,  and  might  be 
put  into  operation  without  great  cost  and  without  any 
interference  with  the  liberty  of  the  individual.  I  sug- 
gest that  every  State  should  institute  a  voluntary 
registration  of  family  histories,  and  should  keep,  in 
clear  and  easily  consulted  form,  a  record  of  all  family 
histories  thus  registered. 

It  is  one  of  the  gravest  evils  of  the  present  time, 
and  a  source  of  terrible  hardship  to  many  persons, 
that,  in  choosing  a  wife  or  husband,  the  choice  has  so 
often  to  be  made  in  almost  complete  ignorance  of 
important  facts  in  the  family  history  of  the  individual 
concerned.  Many  a  man  (and  woman)  has  found 
himself  united  to  a  partner  whose  family  history 
betrays  a  strong  tendency  to  insanity,  tuberculosis, 
or  alcohol,  or  some  other  grave  defect. 

If  such  voluntary  registration  were  instituted,  ana 
if  the  State  made  every  effort,  by  the  aid  of  properly 
equipped  officials,  to  verify  and  check  the  accuracy  of 

206 


FAMILY  HISTORIES  207 

the  recorded  information,  it  would,  I  think,  soon 
become  the  custom,  for  all  or  most  of  the  more  edu- 
cated part  of  the  community,  to  register  each  child 
in  its  proper  place  in  the  genealogical  tables,  and  to 
consult  these  tables  (at  a  small  fee,  perhaps)  when 
engagement  or  marriage  was  contemplated.  Even  if 
the  young  people  concerned  were  slow,  in  many  cases, 
to  take  advantage  of  the  information  thus  rendered 
available,  their  parents  might  be  trusted  to  pay  more 
attention  to  it,  and,  in  the  light  of  it,  to  give  wise 
advice,  which,  when  so  well  founded,  would  not  fail 
to  carry  weight.  When  the  system  had  been  in 
operation  for  some  little  time,  the  mere  absence  of 
any  family  record  in  the  official  tables  would  afford 
a  strong  presumption  of  the  existence  of  some  grave 
defect  in  the  family  concerned,  and  would  be  a 
groimd  for  caution  and  further  inquiry.  That  very 
many  persons  are  not  averse  from  such  recording 
of  their  family  histories,  and  even  their  publication  at 
large,  is  shown  by  the  columns  devoted  to  genealo- 
gies of  citizens  in  some  of  the  leading  newspapers  of 
America. 


APPENDIX  V 


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APPENDIX  VI 

I  add  a  short  list  of  the  books  which  seem  to  me 
best  suited  to  give  the  general  reader  further  informa- 
tion concerning  the  main  topic  discussed  in  the  fore- 
going pages: 

"Applied  Eugenics,"  by  Paul  Popenoe  (editor  of 
the  Journal  of  Heredity)  and  R.  H.  Johnson. 
New  York:  The  Macmillan  Co.,  1918. 

This  is,  I  think,  the  best  general  discussion  of 
eugenic  problems  and  principles  for  the  general 
reader. 

"The  Racial  Prospect,"  by  S.  K.  Humphrey. 
New  York:  Charles  Scribner*s  Sons,  1920,  and 
"Mankind,"  by  the  same  author  and  publisher, 
1917. 

These  two  books  are  excellent  discussions  of  human 
qualities,  with  special  reference  to  the  future  in 
America. 

"The  Old  World  in  the  New,"  by  E.  A.  Ross  (Pro- 
fessor of  Sociology  in  the  University  of  Wis- 
consin).   New  York:  The  Century  Co.,  19 14. 

A  discussion  of  "The  Significance  of  Past  and 
Present  Immigration  to  the  American  People."  The 
author  cites  many  facts  of  observation  and  many 

211 


212  APPENDIX 

weighty  opinions  which  illustrate  the  reality  of  racial 
peculiarities  and  their  persistence  and  influence  under 
changed  environment.  The  careful  reader  will  see 
that  these,  in  the  main,  agree  closely  with  the  evidence 
and  findings  of  my  pages;  compare,  e.  g.,  what  is  said 
on  pages  113  et  seq.  on  the  low  level  of  intelligence 
and  the  character  traits  of  the  immigrants  from 
Southern  Italy.  It  is  much  to  be  desired  that  every 
American  citizen  should  read  this  book  with  an  open 
mind.  Says  this  high  authority:  "Not  until  the 
twenty-first  century  will  the  philosophic  historian  be 
able  to  declare  with  scientific  certitude  that  the  cause 
of  the  mysterious  decline  that  came  upon  the  Ameri- 
can people  early  in  the  twentieth  century  was  the 
deterioration  of  popular  intelligence  by  the  admis- 
sion of  great  numbers  of  backward  immigrants." 

*'The  Direction  of  Human  Evolution,"  by  E.  G. 
Conklin  (Professor  of  Biology  in  Princeton 
University).  New  York:  Charles  Scribner's 
Sons,  1921. 

An  excellent  popular  discussion  of  human  and 
racial  qualities  from  the  eugenic  and  political  point 
of  view  by  a  distinguished  biologist. 

"Population  and  Birth  Control,"  edited  by  E. 
and  C.  Paul.  New  York:  The  Critic  and 
Guide  Company,  191 7. 

Written  by  a  dozen  writers  of  widely  dissimilar 
views,  this  book  contains  a  very  thorough  and  well- 
balanced    discussion    of    that    all-important    topic, 


APPENDIX  213 

birth  control,  its  eugenic  and   dysgenic  tendencies 
and  possibilities. 

"The  Revolutions  of  Civilization,"  by  Professor 
Flinders  Petrie.  New  York:  Harper  Bros., 
1919. 

An  impressive  picture  of  the  rise  and  fall  of  civiliza- 
tions by  this  eminent  archaeologist  and  Egyptologist. 

This  is  only  a  small  selection  from  a  large  and 
rapidly  increasing  literature.  I  wish  to  point  out  to 
readers  that  they  are  not  to  regard  this  selection  as  one- 
sided and  biassed.  The  most  striking  fact  about  the 
present  situation  is  that,  while  popular  and  journalistic 
opinion  refuses  in  the  main  to  face  the  racial  problem 
and  to  take  seriously  the  propaganda  of  the  eugenists, 
all  the  facts,  all  authority,  and  all  instructed  and 
weighty  opinion  converge  to  show  the  supreme  im- 
portance of  this  problem  and  of  this  propaganda. 


INDEX 


Acquired  qualities,  139,  148 
Adaptation  of  culture,  104 
Alpine  race,  the,  89 
America,  responsibility  of,  1-4; 

resources  of,  2;  social  strata 

in,  64 
American  intelligence,  161 
Amusements,  13 
Anthropologic  theory,  the,  7- 

12,  17 
Anthropology,  difficulties  of ,  18 
Anti-Semitism,  27 
Archetypes,  125 
Arlitt,  Miss  A.  H.,  63 
Art  and  morals,  72 
Aryan  myth,  the,  19 

Birth-rate,  155,  185-191 

Bismarck,  113 

Blending  of  races,  9 

Boutmy,  75 

British,     muddle,     112,     116; 

folly,  201 
Buckle,  T.  H.,  25,  108 
Burt,  Cyril,  63 

Cattell,  J.  McK.,  164 

Chamberlain,  H.  S.,  26,  31 

Chinese,  68 

Civilization,  advantage  of  mod- 
ern, 4;  curve  of,  6;  complex- 
ity of,  12,  13,  17,  168 

Civilizations,  rise  and  fall  of,  5 

Civilized  man  and  warfare,  3 

Classic  art,  73 

Climate  and  art,  75 

Climax,  157,  172 

Collective  unconscious,  the, 
125 


Complexity  of  civilization,  12, 

13,  17,  168 
Confirmation  of  tests,  49 
Conklin,  E.  G.,  212 
Constitutional  types,  86 
Cross-breeds,  132 
Culture,  adaptation  of,  104 
Curiosity,  78 
Curve  of  civilization,  6 
Curves  of  distribution,  36,  37, 

161 

Darwinism,  128 
Davenport,  C.  B.,  164 
De  Lapouge,  28 
Defectives,  mental,  40,  165 
Desmolin,  E.,  108 
Deterioration,  147 
Drunkenness,  88 
Dunlap,  Knight,  196 

Economic  interpretation,  7 
Education,  power  of,  16,  22,  52 
Egypt,  8 

Ellis,  Havelock,  159 
England,  93,  153 
English,  H.  B.,  61 
Equality,  23,  178-183 
European  races,  72 
Exchange  of  qualities,  34 
Extroverts,  85 

Family   histories,   registration 

of,  206 
Feminism,  150 
Ferguson,  56 
Finot,  J.,  29 
France,  89 


215 


2l6 


INDEX 


French,  the,  qualities  of,  105, 
III;  components  of,  109; 
and  British,  145 

Freud,  S.,  127,  129 

Galton,  F.,  59 

Garnett,  Maxwell,  69 

Garth,  R.,  56 

Gehring,  A.,  73,  77 

Genius,  40 

German  docility,  113 

Gobineau,  Count,  25 

Goddard,  H.  H.,  43,  166 

Grant,  Madison,  28 

Great  Britain,  157 

Great  War  and  knowledge,  3 

Greece,  168 

Gregarious  instinct,  82 

Halford,  S.  H.,  150,  156 
Harvard  graduates,  164 
Heron,  D.,  188 
Hertz,  F.,  27 
Hindus,  68 
Hirsch,  N.  D.,  44 
Homicide,  97 
Human  reservoirs,  3 
Humphrey,  S.  K.,  211 
Hunter,  R.,  56 
Huot,  119 

Idiots,  40 
Illiterates,  45 
Immigration,  160,  195 
Impairment  of  qualities,  16 
Inadequacy  of  qualities,  12 
Inbreeding,  10 
Indians,  56 
Instincts  of  man,  76 
Intellectual  energy,  51 
Intellectual  forms,  137 
Intelligence,  inborn,  47,  52,  59 
Intelligence  of  children,  50,  57, 

61,  65 
Intelligence  and  morals,  135 


Intelligence  and  social  status, 

63 
Intercourse  of  peoples,  14 
Introverts,  85 
Iseman,  M.  S.,  160 
Italians,  64,  65 

James,  William,  69,  76 
Jews,  28,  33,  127 
Johnson,  R.  H.,  189,  211 
Jung,  C.  G.,  85,  124 

Knowledge,  effects  of  new,  2; 

and  wisdom,  11 
Kornhauser,  A.  W.,  152 

Langfeld,  H.  S.,  73 

Leisure,  13 

Literates  and  illiterates,  45 

Manual  workers,  185 
Medical  profession,  the,  166 
Mental  defect  hereditary,  42 
Mental  defectives,  40,  165 
Mental  tests,  43 
Mesopotamia,  8 
Mill,  J.  S.,  20 
Moral  chaos,  15 
Moral  qualities,  67,  135 
Moral  sentiments,  130 
Morals,  and  art,  72;  and  intel- 
ligence, 135 
Morselli,  E.,  92,  96 
Muddle,  British,  112,  116 
Mulatto  intelligence,  55 
Musical  talent,  124 
Mutiny,  Indian,  71 

National  character,  33 
National  fund,  204 
National  institutions,  146 
Negro,  the,  intelligence  of,  54, 

57;  moral  qualities  of,  117 
Neo- Darwinism,  128 
Nervous  troubles,  87 


INDEX 


217 


New  factor,  172 
New  knowledge,  effects  of,  2 
New  plan,  192-205 
Newsholme,  188 
Nordic  race,  the,  29;  curiosity 
of,  80;  self-assertion  of,  115 
Normans,  114 

Oakesmith,  J.,  29,  31 
Old  age  of  nations,  9 
Oxford  experiment,  61 

Parabola  of  peoples,  6,  157 
Pater,  Walter,  77 
Paul,  E.  and  C,  213 
Pearson,  K.,  60,  164,  188 
Persistence  of  qualities,  142 
Personal  relations,  13 
Petrie,  Flinders,  5,  9,  213 
Physical  energies,  control  of,  1 1 
Pittsburgh,  188 
Plato,  192 

Popenoe,  P.,  164,  189,  193,  211 
Portuguese,  the,  65 
Pressey,  S.  L.,  57,  65 
Professional  classes,  204,  205 
Protestants,  102,  116 
Providence,  120 
Psychoanalysts,  129 

Quessel,  L.,  160 

Race,  H.  V.,  136 
Race  blending,  9 
Race-dogmatists,  26 
Race  hatred,  27 
Race  and  intelligence,  53 
Race  problem,  19 
Race-slumpers,  30 
Race  suicide,  160,  197 
Races,  European,  72 
Ralston,  R.,  65 
Red  men,  117 

Registration    of    family    his- 
tories, 206 


Reid,  Archdall,  88 
Religion  and  race,  lOO 
Responsibility,  174 
Reversion,  147 
Ripley,  Z.,  37,  90,  92 
Robertson,  J.  M.,  29 
Roman  Empire,  8 
Romans,  79 
Romantic  art,  74 
Rome,  170 
Ross,  E.  A.,  211 

Seeck,  Otto,  79,  170 

Selection,  149 

Shaler,  N.  S.,  55,  56,  58,  120, 

132 
Sheffield,  185 
Slavery,  13 
Sociability,  81 
Social  ladder,  152,  155,  159 
Social  status  and  intelligence, 

62,  152 
Social  strata  in  America,  64 
Spain,  171 
Spaniards,  the,  65 
Spencer,  H.,  155 
Standard  demands,  198 
State  register,  206 
Statistical  statements,  35 
Stature,  distribution  of,  37 
Stevenson,  188 
Suicide,  91 

Terman,  S.  M.,  49,  64, 135, 162 
Tests,  mental,  43 
Teter,  G.  P.,  57 
Times,  the  London,  no,  157 
Tourville,  H.  de,  81 
Transmission  of  acquired  qual- 
ities, 148 
Trustworthiness,  134 

Voivenel,  119 
Volney,  106 


2l8 


INDEX 


War,  the  Great,  and  knowl- 
edge, 3 
Warfare,  ancient  and  modern, 

4 
Waugh,  K.  T.,  68 
Western  civilization  at  climax, 

II 
Will-power,  69 


Wonder,  78 
Woodruff,  C,  28 
Woodworth,  R.  S.,  55 

Yerkes,  R.  M.,  49 
Yoakum,  P.  S.,  49 

ZoUshan,  I.,  28 


.41  '^ 


i|iii:> 

